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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25495165">dead man's town</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/jugheadjones/pseuds/jugheadjones'>jugheadjones</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>riverdale, maine [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Riverdale (TV 2017)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe, Childhood Friends, Gay Male Character, Inspired by Stephen King's IT, Multi, Parentdale AU, Period-Typical Homophobia, Stephen King's IT References</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 03:42:07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>139,510</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25495165</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/jugheadjones/pseuds/jugheadjones</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>In the summer of 1989, in the small town of Riverdale, Maine, a group of seven preteens find themselves terrorized by an unnamed horror beyond their comprehension. Their names are Fred Andrews, Hiram Lodge, FP Jones, Hal Cooper, Mary Moore, Harry Clayton and Alice Smith, and they make up the Losers Club. </p><p>An alternate universe based on Stephen King's IT.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Alice Cooper/Hal Cooper</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>riverdale, maine [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1846927</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>70</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. hal cooper makes a friend</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/bewareoftrips/gifts">bewareoftrips</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>"born down in a dead man's town" - bruce springsteen</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <em>"He thought that fat boys were probably only allowed to love pretty girls inside. If he told anyone how he felt (not that he had anyone to tell), that person would probably laugh until he had a heart attack." - Stephen King, It. </em>
  </p>
</blockquote><p><span class="u"> <strong>JUNE, 1989.</strong> </span> <span class="u"></span></p><p>With a cautious hand, Hal Cooper spun the rack of postcards on the circulation desk of the Riverdale Children’s Library. The wire rack made a pleasantly musical noise as it turned, a tinkling sound that faded into the calming hum of library noise - the whisper of pages, the low hum of the air conditioner, the occasional murmur of voices rising from the corner where the youngest children read. </p><p>Above the desk, a black-and-white notice stood out starkly from the others, clean and serious among the pastel flyers advertising music lessons and the dates of children’s story time. </p><p>
  <strong>REMEMBER THE CURFEW</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>7 P.M.</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>RIVERDALE POLICE DEPARTMENT</strong>
</p><p>He selected a postcard, one that had faded from age and that he nevertheless thought was very pretty: a slightly tattered image of Sweetwater River in the spring, not far from the place where the canal that fed the river ran through Pickens Park and under what the residents of Riverdale called the Kissing Bridge. With an uncharacteristic flutter of optimism, Hal paid the fifty cents for the card to Mrs. Starrett, the librarian, and carried it to one of the low tables in the centre of the room. Here he uncapped his pen with his teeth and addressed the card simply in his best handwriting: </p><p><em> Miss Alice Smith </em><br/><em> Lower Main Street </em> <em><br/>Riverdale, Maine</em></p><p>He wasn’t sure of her building number, but that was all right: Hal knew that whatever mailman serviced Lower Main Street would likely have an idea of where the Smiths lived. Riverdale wasn’t large enough a town that anybody escaped being known and scrutinized by everyone else, and though most people on Hal’s side of town considered themselves above people like Roger Smith, Alice’s father was well-known among his mother’s friends, who derided the cinderblock quality of the apartments on Lower Main and referred to them frequently in town council meetings as an <em>eyesore.</em> </p><p>Alice herself couldn’t have been further from the description. Throughout the school year, since the Coopers had moved back to Maine from Texas, Hal had been mesmerized by her beauty. While the rest of the fifth grade sat stiffly in rows, eyes attuned to Mrs. Douglas’ boring lessons on grammar, arithmetic, and history, Hal would find his eyes drawn to Alice like a magnet, noting the loveliness of her heart-shaped face, her clear blue eyes and the way the sun in winter lit a halo around her long, tangled hair. </p><p>Hal resented Mrs. Douglas for having once described Alice’s hair as yellow. <em> His </em> hair was yellow: cropped short on his head and drying in spikes when it was wet. Alice’s hair was as blonde as corn silk, but it glimmered like pull-taffy at the fair, different shades of flaxen and gold woven into each strand. Her hair hung in messy waves down her back, falling well past the waistband of her cheap skirt so that she often sat on the ends, shifting left and right in class to keep it from snagging on the chair or under her thighs. To prevent this she often braided it back, but the braid always hung crooked from having done it herself, with wisps of gold escaping at frequent intervals and looking so messy and lopsided that she often took it down before lunch. Many times in class had Hal braided and unbraided the hair for her in his head, imagining how he would tie it carefully with a satin hair ribbon, how she might shake it out with a sharp motion of her head and he would unwind the strands by running his fingers through the curls. The thought of his hand in Alice Smith’s hair was almost unbearable to him: a burning fantasy that made him feel both guilty and exhilarated. </p><p>Hal thought she was easily as pretty as the other girls in class, even girls like Hermione Reyes who were well-known for their prettiness, whose family lived in one of the new houses on West Broadway and whose raven hair shone glossily over her shoulders. Hermione sat next to Alice in class, a misfortune she audibly bemoaned, and to an adult the difference between them would seem as severe as night and day: Hermione with her permed hair and brand-new clothes, Alice slumping and staring at her scuffed-out shoes, the sleeves of her worn-out sweater tugged low over her wrists to hide the bruises that were often there, her radiant gold hair befitting someone much older than herself. </p><p>It was her hair he was thinking of now as he carefully opened his notebook on the table of the Children’s Library and began to compose a poem, pausing here and there to scratch out words or move them around to where they were better suited. After a period of about twenty minutes he had a haiku that he was relatively happy with, and he printed it carefully on the blank side of the postcard in a blocky hand and made sure it was stamped. </p><p>On the street outside the library, he paused for a moment with his hand on the card, half in and half out of the mail slot. Suppose Alice knew somehow that he had sent it? No, it was impossible. He thought maybe she would think it had come from one of the bigger boys, one of the eighth or ninth graders, even, and she would be happy about it. That was all he could ask for, seeing as he certainly had no intention of admitting to her the truth: that he was desperately, madly, and mushily in love with her, that it was her blonde hair and baggy clothes his mind drifted to whenever a love song played over his mother’s kitchen radio. </p><p>It was the end of June. Summer vacation had begun as of three-fifteen that afternoon, the other kids in class rushing jubilantly for the exit as soon as they had received their end-of-term reports from Mrs. Douglas, who doled them out laboriously in alphabetical order, ignorant of the impatience bubbling up from the scores of eleven-year-olds who had pickup baseball games to begin and friends houses to run to. </p><p>Hal was not among them: since his family’s move in October he had yet to make a single friend in Riverdale, a blow that was cushioned somewhat by the fact that Hal had never had a single friend anywhere. Having no experience with the alternative meant he was mostly ignorant of his own loneliness: he was content when he went places like the library in quiet solitude, and only occasionally felt his heart open with a pang of loss when he heard kids calling to one another in the evenings. </p><p>Overall he was pleased about how he had done, and there was that bit of ugliness where Marty Mantle had threatened to kill him when he hadn’t let him cheat over his shoulder on the final exam, but even that fell secondary to the joy of having paused for a moment on the steps of the school and having Alice Smith herself ask him to move out of her way. They had exchanged words - a full conversation, really - and she had even signed his yearbook, uncapping her pen with her teeth and dotting the I with a lopsided heart. </p><p>She was the only person who had signed the two blank pages at the back of his yearbook intended for signatures, but Hal didn’t care. As far as he was concerned, some days Alice Smith was the only person in the universe. </p><p>He let the postcard fall into the mail slot. That was done. Carrying his library books under one arm, he continued to the drugstore and bought two chocolate bars, which he ate as he walked, imagining Alice’s face as she read the poem. He pictured her blue eyes, wide with surprise, that she would push back the hair that she so often let fall like a curtain over her face and smile, knowing briefly that at least one person had noticed that she was beautiful. </p><p>“Hey!” </p><p>The shout came from across the road, an older boy’s voice. Someone who had only one signature in their yearbook was not called to very often, and Hal failed to even look up, assuming the voice was appealing to someone else. He was lost in the memory of his brief conversation with Alice - the looping heart she had drawn over the I in her name, the brief jolt that had rushed through him when their eyes had met on the stone steps. A part of his mind registered that he’d walked beyond the center of town onto an isolated, rural road parallel to the canal, but most of his consciousness was taken up by the blue of Alice’s eyes, and he blushed happily, continuing to walk in the vague direction of the town dump. </p><p>“Fatso!” </p><p>The voice rang out again, and Hal felt himself crash back to earth in a hurry. Unlike the first shout, there was no mystery as to whom this voice was addressing. </p><p>Hal was twice as fat as the next-chubbiest kid in his grade, his thighs overlapping the edges of the unforgiving metal seat attached to his desk so that his pudgy hip pressed up against the metal bar and he had frequent nightmares about one day being stuck. Despite the high temperatures, he wore the same thick sweatshirts and baggy jeans to school that he had worn all winter, ever since the day that Marty Mantle had stood up in the back row and bellowed that Hal Cooper had the biggest pair of tits he’d ever seen. </p><p>As a result, he was miserably ashamed of his chest, even more so than his stomach, which sometimes hung below the hem of his baggy sweatshirts or pressed up securely against the wooden rim of his desk. Marty had also found it necessary to deride Hal’s chubby hips, mocking the way he walked with an exaggerated, rolling gait, like some caricature of an overly sexy woman. </p><p>His mother protested that it was only puppy fat, that if he didn’t try so hard to disappear in heavy clothes that he’d even be good looking, but for one of very few times in his life Hal had stood up to her and refused to wear anything but his four sweatshirts to school. The thought of displaying his body in front of Alice and the rest of the fifth grade after Marty’s mockery was beyond the pale. </p><p>He looked up and felt terror flood through him, all the way down to his feet. Standing in the shade of an elm across the street from him were Marty Mantle, Darryl Doiley, and Mike Minetta.</p><p>Darryl and Mike scared him, but not so much as Marty, who was going on thirteen years old and still in the fifth grade. He would be repeating again next year: Mrs. Douglas had failed to call his name when handing out the end-of-term reports to the rest of the class. This, Hal realized with some belated regret, was directly due to his refusal to let Marty copy from him during their last exam. Marty had clearly shown up to make good on the promise he had hissed over Hal’s shoulder as he blocked his paper from view: </p><p>
  <em> you’re dead, fatboy.  </em>
</p><p>Hal had learned quite quickly that everyone at Riverdale Public School was terrified of Marty. He greased his long hair back and carried a folded knife in the front pocket of his jeans, the blade riding with a silver Zippo lighter and a tattered carton of cigarettes. His shirtsleeves were always rolled up or torn off, like he had seen a caricature of a bully on television and decided to mimic the fashion: he cuffed his jeans, too, and wore heavy black boots with metal taps that could deliver a bruising kick to the unfortunate ribs of anyone who got in his way. His breath was always foul, and his eyes were as black and cold as the illustrations of sharks in Hal’s science book. Darryl and Mike were stupid and mean and did anything Marty asked of them - as far as bullies went, then, the three twelve-year-olds across the street from him were world-class. </p><p>Because Hal was smart enough to stay out of their way, he had survived the fifth grade mostly unharmed, enduring only the basic verbal and emotional abuse that came with being overweight. If Hal hadn’t offered himself up as a target in a brazen fit of courage during exams, the three bullies would have tangled with someone else. </p><p>His realization came too late. They rushed at him, Darryl on one arm and Mike on the other, pinning him up against the fence that delineated Kansas street from the hill that fell sharply away on the other side. The embankment disappeared into a three-mile-long stretch of untamed foliage, inappropriately named by residents of Riverdale as the Barrens. Far below him, a skinny trickle of Sweetwater River flowed through the dense, mosquito-ridden vegetation, the same stream that eventually ran below the Kissing Bridge. </p><p>His two library books hit the ground, and Hal winced as Marty stomped on one, splintering the spine and grinding the green cover into the dirt. </p><p>“What do you want?” Hal yelled at him, astonished by the boldness in his own voice. He didn’t feel particularly brave - his bladder felt very full, his legs shaking and his heart thumping painfully in his throat - but he knew with an indignant rush of anger that he’d done nothing to deserve their attack, and the thought made him foolishly angry. He twisted uselessly against the two pairs of arms holding him to the fence. </p><p>“Wanna teach you something, fatso.” Marty wasn’t touching him, but he was close enough that the stink of his breath was in Hal’s face, his chest almost kissing the bulk of Hal’s stomach. He was wearing the uniform of almost all the older boys at Riverdale Public - a white t-shirt and blue jeans, though his t-shirt was stretched at the collar and stained. Hal forced himself to look Marty in the eyes. The older boy was almost a head taller, his lips curved in a shark-like smile to reveal teeth that appeared canine-sharp. </p><p>Marty reached to touch Hal’s face, and Hal strained away. Marty scowled. </p><p>“Hold him.” Marty snapped, and Darryl gave Hal’s wrist a painful twist in response. Darryl and Mike laughed at his resounding squeal, shoving him back into the fence as he struggled more desperately to escape. For once Marty didn’t join in their laughter, only smiled with a chilling coolness that slowed Hal’s blood. There was something in those eyes that suggested the worst was yet to come: something unhinged. The breath in Hal’s lungs was suddenly thick, heavy, the air building with electricity like humidity before a storm. </p><p>He looked over Marty’s shoulder, down to the dusty strip of Kansas road that he had walked without realizing it. Across the road, there were nothing but empty fields to which he could run, and even if he managed an escape they were bound to catch up with him quickly. The chances of a passing car were slim: the road they were on led out of town, down to the gravel pit and Route Two beyond that, but not many people from Riverdale ever left. There was sweat pooling under his armpits, staining the gray cotton of his bulkiest sweatshirt. He tried one last time to heave his pudgy arm out of Darryl’s sweaty grasp. </p><p>Marty pulled out his knife and clicked it open. </p><p>This was not the same pocketknife Hal had glimpsed so many times in the school playground, Marty flicking the blade in and out for show. This knife must have been new to him - a folding hunter’s knife with a leather handle and a long, flat blade that could have been five inches long. The clear June sunlight glittered on the metal. </p><p>“Hold him,” Marty repeated, the same dead calm in his eyes. Mike and Darryl glanced at one another over Hal’s blond head, sharing a brief and mutual uncertainty. Terror sapped all the strength out of Hal’s limbs, and a sharp thought took root in his head like an animal burrowing into soil: </p><p><em> Darryl and Mike don’t know what he’s capable of. They know he’s out of control. He could kill me right now and they wouldn’t stop him. </em> </p><p>It was suddenly clear to him, standing on the edge of Kansas road with his back against the splintering fence, what it would mean to die. He had never understood it so clearly before, not even the day when his mother had sat him down and explained to him that his father was never coming back from overseas. Dying meant you never got home and ate dinner or watched TV, never brought your library books back, never went to high school with the other kids or saw Alice Smith’s blonde hair again. It was currently him and his wits against a five-inch-long blade and the knowledge that depending on what happened right here, right now, he might never go home tonight. It might be all over, all eleven years of his life, standing in the dust with the Barrens sloping behind him. </p><p>Marty held up the blade. “I’m gonna test you,” he declared, turning the knife this way and that so that Hal could see Marty’s name inscribed on the handle. Using his free hand, Marty drew the bottom of Hal’s sweatshirt up to the centre of his chest, letting his belly hang out over his blue jeans. He grinned and poked it with the tip of the knife, too quick and light to break skin. Hal sucked his stomach away with a gasp, and Marty’s grin became larger and more unhinged. “It’s exam time, Tits.” </p><p>“I’m sorry,” Hal whimpered, feeling tears building up in his eyes. He begged himself not to cry, to save the last bit of his dignity. “I’ll let you copy next year, I’ll-” </p><p>“Here’s the first question.” Marty was moving the knife in smooth circles just above Hal’s flesh, the tip never making contact with his skin, but leaving a phantom pain from the anticipation. Hal held himself still, still, still, praying that Marty’s hand wouldn’t slip. “When someone asks you if they can copy off your exam, what are you gonna say?” </p><p>“Yes,” gasped Hal, his body very still, a buzzing in his ears like a swarm of bees. His vision was gray and hazy from terror, the blood pumping at double speed from his heart to his head, and he nodded his head up and down for emphasis, never taking his eyes off the heavy blade. “Yes, yes, I’ll say yes!” </p><p>“That’s the wrong answer, Tubby.” </p><p>Hal started to cry. It came involuntarily, tears dripping down his pudgy cheeks like a faucet suddenly leaking. It occurred to him suddenly that there <em> were </em> no right answers, that he was at the mercy of Marty Mantle’s buck knife and three pimply adolescents who had the average IQ of a salamander. There was nothing to do but let them take their pound of flesh. </p><p>“If just <em> anybody </em> asks to copy off you, I don’t give a fuck what you say.” The blade pressed cold against his belly, colder than ice. “Now if <em> I </em>ask to copy off of you, what are you going to say?” </p><p>“Yes,” Hal gasped, every nerve in his body attuned to that frigid length of metal lying against his skin. He repeated the word like a prayer. “Yes, I’ll say yes. I promise I’ll say yes.” </p><p>“Very good.” Marty smiled and crowded closer to him. The blade of the buck knife moved against his skin until the point dimpled his flesh. “One more question.” </p><p>Over Marty’s shoulder, Hal watched the car approach. It was an old yellow ‘51 Ford - Hal knew cars - an older man and woman behind the wheel, dressed up for a Sunday drive of the type he and his mother used to take with his grandfather. The car rolled slowly towards the section of fence where Hal was being held, as deliberate and serene as a funeral procession. </p><p>“Try it,” Marty snarled, crowding even closer so that he was blocking the knife from view with his body. Hal saw the woman turn to look impassively out the window of the car, her eyes sweeping over him like he wasn’t there. The knife point pressed just below his belly button. “Go ahead. You’ll be picking your guts up off your fucking sneakers.” </p><p>A wave of dizziness passed over Hal again. He did not scream. The car rolled by, the old man turning once to look at them and then facing ahead. The car passed over the bridge and drove down towards Route Two, the rattle of the muffler dissipating into the still air. </p><p>“Question three,” Marty continued, smiling broadly as the car disappeared, taking Hal’s last hopes of rescue with it. “How am I going to make sure you never forget what I’ve taught you?” </p><p>The town dump was somewhere behind him: he could hear the circling seagulls and smell the faint reek of garbage blown over on the wind. “I… I promise,” Hal stammered, tears leaking out of his eyes. Even in fear for his life, he felt bitterness at Marty for having made him cry, for exposing him to be the blubbering wimp that everyone at Riverdale Public suspected him to be. He made a silent promise to himself that <em> if </em> he lived through this, he would grow up to be someone whom no one could make cry. He would be <em> brave.  </em></p><p>Marty beamed happily. “I know, Tits!” he announced delightedly, like an over-enthusiastic student being called upon in class. “I know how you’ll remember! I’ll carve my name on your stupid, fat gut!” </p><p>Darryl and Mike, who had been watching the lesson unfold with astonished silence, suddenly laughed again, cheerfully. For a brief moment, Hal felt a welling of relief, a sense that they had finally let him in on the joke. Of course no twelve-year-old would be serious enough to gut him like an animal, exam or no exam. It had all been a bit of intimidation, a ruse, some play-acting like the tough guys in movies, and now Marty would beat him up and move on. </p><p>Then he noticed Marty wasn’t laughing. </p><p>In a sharp upward motion from navel to rib, Marty dragged the sharp point of the knife through the flesh of Hal’s stomach. He opened a thin line in the skin that was momentarily bloodless, the flesh puckered and drawn unnaturally apart. Then dark beads of crimson began to well along the length of the cut, as rich and intense as communion wine. With two short slashes and another line, he completed the letter M on the left side of Hal’s belly. </p><p>Hal looked down at the cuts in shock. Blood rushed down from the injury, staining the waistband of his pants and leaking down the skin of his thigh in a cold, wet stream. He suddenly felt trapped outside his body, as though he were watching this unfold from far away, floating somewhere high above the treetops in the Barrens. He looked down to see himself on Kansas street, but as he rose out of the earth his gaze quickly shifted to Memorial Park, where the white dome of the Standpipe stood out among the green grass. He could see the shining black head of the Paul Bunyan statue, the ballfield and the Kissing Bridge, the roof of the library and the glass tunnel that connected the two parts. </p><p><em> Marty’s name has five letters </em>, he thought, and suddenly he was yanked back to earth with the same urgency as when he had first heard Marty and his cronies call out for him across the road. Plunged back into his body, he stared into Marty’s eyes and the sordid reality of his mutilation again, noticed the engraved letters on the handle of the knife stained with his own blood. </p><p>He lunged sideways away from the knife, and Marty shoved him back into the rail at once. Hal leaned backward, adding his force to Marty’s shove, and threw one foot up before he could lose his nerve and planted it on Marty’s stomach. He hadn’t intended it as a kick - his only thought was increasing his backward momentum as quickly as possible away from the blade of the knife - but seeing Marty’s startled expression filled him with a ferocious hatred and euphoria he hadn’t thought possible of himself. </p><p>He kicked off from Marty with all his force, and the section of rickety fence broke suddenly behind his weight, forcing Darryl and Mike to drop him to catch Marty, who went sliding backward in his smooth-soled engineer’s boots in the dirt. Then Hal was falling, falling, air rushing up past him as the wooden boards of the fence fell away, Marty’s furious face and glittering black eyes getting smaller and smaller above him like he was being sucked up to heaven. </p><p>Then his back hit the ground, and he was sliding, tumbling upside-down through brambles and weeds while coarse dirt and sharp grass rushed away through his fingers. He was sliding down the hill into the Barrens, somersaulting twice, momentarily distracted from the pain in his stomach by the long-fingered branches and clusters of bracken that tore at his vulnerable skin. His sweatshirt was somewhere up around his armpits, the seat of his pants being snagged by rocks and trees, and the white rail of the Kansas street fence had receded to approximately the size of a dollhouse fence when the bloody sweatshirt finally tumbled up over his eyes, blotting out his vision. Then he hit something that stopped his descent abruptly, the impact so violent that he felt reverberations shudder through each and everyone one of his teeth. </p><p>Climbing slowly and unsteadily to his hands and knees, testing to see if he’d broken his back, he yanked his sweatshirt down into place and looked over his shoulder at the thing that had broken his fall. It was an enormous tree stump, the roots reaching out like gnarled fingers to grab at his ankles. Far below him - he was about halfway down the embankment - he could see a few flashes of sunlight on water and hear the bubbling trickle of Sweetwater River. Whimpering from the pain of impact, Hal picked a few bits of bark out of the soft flesh of his hands and stared up at the rail far above him. </p><p>“I’M GOING TO FUCKING KILL YOU, FATBOY!” </p><p>The bellow was Marty’s and there was a crashing sound as the older teenager leaped over the remains of the fence and landed hard in the undergrowth. The knife was still in his hand - even at this distance, Hal could see the heavy blade winking in the sun. Marty landed on his feet somehow, and began to progress down the hill in a series of huge leaps, the silver taps on his heavy black boots kicking up glints of sunlight through the tangled thicket of brush. </p><p>Hal gave himself a quick once-over. His back was bruised but not broken, all of his limbs seemed attached, and while his hands and leg were bleeding roughly - never mind the mess of his stomach, his heavy grey sweatshirt already turning a rusty amber - his body seemed to be in good enough shape to support himself. </p><p><em> Run, </em> he thought, but it was nearly too late - Marty was progressing down the embankment at frightening speed, unhindered by reason or sanity. Hal could see his mouth stretched into a huge horrible grin, flecks of spit flying from his lips as he panted with the exertion, the knife clutched in one hand. Hal turned and managed to put a few yards of distance between them by shoving his way through undergrowth, but the brush was so thick down here that the shrubs seemed to push him back out. </p><p>“I’M GONNA FUCKING GUT YOU!” </p><p>Marty came barrelling down the last stretch of hill that separated them, his knife held out in front of him like a spear, and Hal suddenly planted his feet in the silty dirt and let him come. He bent his knees slightly like an outfielder, balancing his weight in between his legs, and as Marty grabbed at the collar of his ravaged sweatshirt, the knife held high in the other hand, Hal pulled backward and stuck out his left leg with a mixture of stupidity and determination. </p><p>He overbalanced and fell again, a tangle of brambles embedding their spines in his back, but not before Marty hit his outstretched leg with both shins. To Hal’s surprise and awe, Marty’s feet were knocked out from under him and he<em> flew </em> - his skinny body piloted through the air above the shrubs and trees like a rock from a slingshot. </p><p>Then Marty hit the ground, landing hard on a flat rock with an audible crack from what Hal thought was his shoulder. The knife spiralled out of his grip, disappearing into a clump of thick bracken, and Marty went head over heels off the rock and down into the thicker foliage. There was a tearing sound of greenery breaking under his weight, then an audible thud. Then another. Then silence. </p><p>A shard of sunlight from Sweetwater River winked through the green. Hal sat dazed in the thorny brambles where he had fallen, faintly aware of their tiny spines cutting into his skin. For a moment he expected Marty to rush up through the bushes, knife in hand, like the monster at the end of the horror movie that was somehow still alive - but nothing moved. The undergrowth was too thick and lush to see where he had landed. </p><p><em> I’ve killed him </em>, Hal thought faintly, and apart from a brief worry about his mother’s reaction to him going to prison, the thought was perhaps not as unsettling as it should have been. A shout from far above his head echoed down the embankment, and he looked up to see Darryl and Mike climbing over the fence. </p><p><em> Please no, </em> Hal bemoaned silently. Unaided by Marty’s senseless bloodlust, the two were climbing more slowly than their friend had done, but they were older and faster than Hal, and would catch up with him soon enough. Hal forced himself to his feet. </p><p>Going up was no longer an option - he doubted he could have made it up the sheer embankment anyway - so Hal began to travel doggedly down towards the river, grabbing at roots and bushes to haul himself down hand over hand. The mosquitos were bad here, and the dirt was wetter and thicker under his feet, oozing into his sneakers with the overwhelming smell of rot. Wet leaves slapped his face, and the brush was so close together that all he could see was green. </p><p>The ground suddenly rushed out under his feet in a mudslide, and Hal went sliding again, landing on his back and shooting down under the bushes like a waterslide at the fair. This time he didn’t stop until he hit water - he landed waist-deep in Sweetwater with a jarring thud, rocks and pebbles driven into the back of his legs with bruising force. Hal squeezed his eyes shut tight, turned his head to one side, and opened them. </p><p>Had he any breath left in his body, he would have screamed. As it was, he only opened and closed his mouth uselessly, his chest heaving as he panted with horror at the sight next to him. </p><p>Marty Mantle was lying on the bank of Sweetwater River, dead. His feet were in the water, and a loose strap of his engineer’s boot - the buckle had broken - was waving softly on the current. Apart from that slight movement, his body was perfectly still. His shirt was soaked with as much blood as Hal’s, and a trickle of blood ran out of his nose and mouth. His denim jeans were shredded at both knees, and his open eyes had rolled back so that only the whites showed to the sky. </p><p>Hal almost threw up. Part of his mind was screaming at him to look away, but a sense of blind curiosity and decency won out. He splashed his way upstream to where Marty was lying, his long black hair spread out on the rocks like tendrils of oil.</p><p>Hal stopped about a foot from Marty’s body and crouched down, anchoring himself with a hand on a nearby stone. He had twisted an ankle sometime during the fall, and the rest of his body throbbed with an all-over ache. The pain in his stomach was fading back into his consciousness, and he consciously avoided touching his sweatshirt, frightened of how much blood might come away on his hand. </p><p>Marty’s neck was bent awkwardly towards his shoulder, his exposed ear red with blood. Hal took a few cautious steps through the water, his swollen ankle briefly soothed by the cold, and stood as close as he dared to Marty’s body. </p><p>Marty suddenly popped his eyes open and grabbed Hal’s leg. </p><p>Hal screamed, delivered an unforgiving kick to the older boy’s bruised face and hopped back from Marty in the water, the current sweeping his feet out from under him so that he landed on his back yet again. Hal scrambled to his feet and Marty grabbed his leg again, grinning wildly, his jack-o-lantern teeth red with rivulets of blood. His hands tightened on Hal’s chubby calf, trying to pull himself up out of the riverbed - or pull Hal down, he wasn’t sure which. His mouth was hanging open, his lips rolled back to expose his sharp teeth, and Hal could still hear what he was saying, even though a garbled mouthful of blood: </p><p>
  <em> Gonna kill you tits, i’m gonna kill you you fat shit </em>
</p><p>Hal shoved him off and took two huge steps back, the bloody water splashing up over his ankles. Impossibly, Marty rose again to his feet like some grotesque zombie, his pale face streaked with blood, the same hateful grin splitting his cheeks open. The knife was somewhere up the hill above them, but it was no matter. Nothing alive could possibly win against Marty’s level of burgeoning insanity. </p><p>Suddenly, though, Hal was angry. It was the same indignant anger he’d felt up on Kansas street, when he’d been walking along with his library books and Marty Mantle had pinned him to the fence and pulled a knife. He hadn’t asked for any of this. Now his back hurt, his ankle hurt, his stomach hurt, he owed two dollars in library fines, and his mother was going to have a conniption when she saw what had become of his sweatshirt. </p><p>Marty lunged towards him, and Hal, spurred on by the indignity of his library fines, kicked him as hard as he could in the balls. </p><p>Marty’s eyes went very wide. He exhaled long, and a stream of blood ran down his chin. His cold empty eyes met Hal’s expressionless gaze, and then he suddenly fell to his knees on the riverbed, letting out an oddly human-sounding moan. </p><p>“Ohhhh you fucking broke my BALLS, you fat shit!” </p><p>A crashing sound from the terrain above them told Hal that Mike and Darryl were finally catching up. He backed up, taking one last triumphant look at Marty kneeling in the creek, and then took off at a run alongside the stream, thinking longingly of escaping out of the Barrens, rushing home, and taking a good long shower. He began to climb the opposite bank, pausing at the top to look over his shoulder, and saw with terror that Marty was somehow back on his feet, standing in the stream with Mike and Darryl on either side of him. </p><p>Hal flung himself down the opposite side of the hill, gasping with the exertion and limping badly on his ankle. In PE at school he was one of the slowest boys in the class, and though he had begged his mother to write a note that would excuse him from running the mile, Prudence Cooper insisted on what she called a well-rounded education. Now he was thankful that he hadn’t spent the fifth grade sitting on a bench next to Hiram Lodge, whose asthma prevented him from participating in even the most mundane activities. He had a feeling, though, that no amount of laps around the schoolyard had prepared him for this - the energy that spurred him on was something deeper and more primal. </p><p>As he ran the sound of the river faded behind him, and he found a wooded area that wasn’t too bad to run through, weaving through tree trunks that pressed close together and favoring his good leg. He had the idea that he’d eventually find a path out - while the Barrens looked wild and uninhabitable, they were deeper than they were wide, and the town of Riverdale surrounded them on three sides. If he followed his nose he’d at the very least be able to lead himself to the town dump with confidence. </p><p>Pausing to take a break, Hal set his wide hands on his thighs and breathed in heavily. He listened patiently for any sound of Marty and the others breaking through the trees, but all he could hear was the hum of mosquitoes. No - he paused. The humming was too loud and constant to be insects, a drone that seemed to come from only one direction. He walked slowly towards the noise, overcome with the same distracted curiosity that had led him to stand over Marty’s body. What he found was surprisingly ordinary: a short cement cylinder standing vertically out of the ground, capped with a manhole that read RIVERDALE SEWER DEPT. </p><p><em> Morlock holes </em> , Hal thought. Back in March, Mrs. Starrett had recommended him H.G. Wells’ <em> The Time Machine </em> , and Hal had devoured it over the course of two weeks. He knew, rationally, that <em> The Time Machine </em>was fiction, and that this man-made tunnel - startlingly out-of-place in the green, natural world of the Barrens - led to nothing more interesting than greywater and silt. But it made him think of the well-like structures that led down to where the Morlocks lived without sunlight, and looking at it made a cold chill sweep over him, despite the heat. </p><p>Hal turned his back on the humming concrete and walked in the opposite direction. Gradually the hum faded, replaced with the sound of running water and kids' voices up ahead. Hal listened carefully, struck by a brief pang of loneliness that was unfamiliar to him. Then the low drone of older voices behind him and the reckless snapping of twigs brought him back to reality in a hurry. </p><p>Darryl. Mike. and Marty. They were nearby. </p><p>Hal began to run, stepping carefully along the banks to avoid making extraneous sound. As he approached the place where the kids’ voices got louder, he swerved, not wanting to lead the older boys to fresh blood. Crouching to make himself smaller, he moved through bushes and trees, his sights set on a huge, gnarled elm that stood at an angle, its roots forming a deep cave. Saying a quick prayer that he’d be able to stow his torn and bloodied clothes in the garbage before his mother caught sight of them, Hal squeezed himself through a narrow opening in the roots and curled himself up tight in a ball. </p><p>“Where is he?” Darryl’s voice, echoing far too close to Hal for comfort. He peeked up through the gnarled roots and caught sight of the three of them standing about six feet away, huddled together. </p><p>“Bet they saw him,” Mike offered, and Hal realized with some regret that he was talking about the kids by the stream. “Let’s go.” </p><p>They walked away, snapping twigs and branches under the soles of their boots. Hal stayed crouched in the shadows as Marty’s voice floated back to him from afar, raised mockingly: </p><p>“Hey! What the hell is this!” </p><p>Some sort of reply from one of the kids, a high-pitched voice that sounded afraid. </p><p>“What a fucking baby dam,” Marty mocks, a phrase that made no sense to Hal, unless Marty had called someone a damn baby and he had misunderstood. He listened to a series of crashing sounds and splashes, as though the three older boys were violently throwing things into the stream. The same kid’s voice began to wail, and another spoke loudly. One of Marty’s cronies guffawed stupidly, but Marty’s voice cut in, sharp as ice. </p><p>“Don’t give me any shit, you stuttering freak, or I’ll pound the tar out of you, hear me?” </p><p>A noise like Marty had shoved him, skin on skin and water splashing, and Hal realized who it was who was likely bearing the brunt of the teenager’s abuse. The only stuttering freak he was aware of in Riverdale was Fred Andrews, whose little brother had died the previous October, around the time Hal had moved. He was in the other fifth grade class, and Hal didn’t know him very well. </p><p>“Go on, break it!” Marty yelled, and a splintering crack cut through the air, gunshot-loud even at the distance Hal was crouched. The running water got briefly louder, and Marty’s baby dam comment finally connected: Fred and the others had been building a dam in the stream, and either Marty or his friends had just broken it to bits. Hal sent a silent apology to them from his hiding place. </p><p>“Stop that crying!” Hal heard Mike yell, and there was another thud of someone being hit. The kid who’d been hit started yammering, and then suddenly let out a thin, reedy scream. Another splash. </p><p>“All right, listen up,” Marty finally growled, and Hal imagined them all standing around in the water, Fred and whoever was with him, Darryl and Mike probably eager to keep tearing down the shattered dam but waiting on whatever their leader said. “You seen another kid come through here? Big fat kid, bleeding like a pig?” </p><p>Fred’s voice came again, a reply that sounded like no. </p><p>“Better be telling the truth,” Mike snarled. “You’re gonna regret it if you ain’t.” </p><p>Another reply, and some muttering and indistinct threats among the older boys. Finally Hal heard Marty speak: </p><p>“Let’s go.” </p><p>Hal heard them splashing back towards the opposite bank, and then the brush-snapping sounds of them heading off in the direction from which he’d come. He breathed a sigh of relief and let his head sag back against the wall of his shelter. He listened faintly to the sound of the kid crying, Fred’s murmured words of comfort. Exhaustion had seeped into his bones, replacing adrenaline and making him feel weak and tired. Tiny squares of sunlight streamed through the gap caused by the gnarled roots, and he stared blindly at the pattern on his skin. He lifted his shirt experimentally to check the cuts on his belly: the whole thing had congealed into a red paste that smeared across his stomach like jam. </p><p>Hal pulled his sweatshirt back down and looked sadly at the violent stain across it. This sweatshirt, while far too hot for the summertime, had been his favourite. Now it and the rest of his clothes would have to be bagged and buried in the garbage in the garage, if not carried off to the dump or flung into the dumpster outside the school. If his overprotective mother happened to find what remained of his clothes in the trash, he’d be in for a round of questioning that would result in being kept inside the rest of the summer. </p><p>Hal crawled slowly out of the hiding place, wincing at the throbbing in his ankle and back. He began to walk along the stream, noting the silence apart from the trickle of water - Fred and his friend had evidently realized it couldn’t hurt to make themselves scarce, in case the bigger boys came back. He rounded the corner to where the dam had been and realized he’d been mistaken. </p><p>The broken dam was there all right - a hefty pile of splintered wood and branches that was now strewn across the banks of the small stream like an explosion. But the kids were there too: Fred Andrews and another boy that Hal knew but didn’t recognize at first, slumped as he was on the banks of the river much the way Marty had been earlier, when Hal had mistaken him for dead. The unconscious boy was small, his splayed arms rail-thin, and his skin the colour of a deep tan. Fred was attempting to prop him up against his knee, trying to keep the boy’s head from falling back. They were both bleeding from where Marty’s friends had hit them. </p><p>As though sensing Hal’s presence, Fred whipped his head around to look at him. Hal’s heart sank when he saw the desperation in the other boy’s eyes. He thought longingly of his library books, trampled into the dirt on Kansas street, and the shower he had promised himself when all this was over. Hal stepped closer and realized with a jolt that he did know the unconscious boy: it was Hiram Lodge, the asthmatic kid who sat alone on the bench during gym. </p><p>“H-h-hey,” Fred greeted him. He stuttered when he spoke. Hal had never known him without the stutter, but everyone said it had worsened since his little brother had died. <em> Murdered, </em>Prudence had whispered over the phone once when she’d thought Hal couldn’t hear. “C-c-could you h-h-help us-” </p><p>“What happened to him?” Hal asked. He tried to remember everything he had learned in school about first aid, but came up short. Something floated into his head about turning the kid on his side in case he vomited, but apart from that his Red Cross knowledge seemed to be stuck up somewhere in his brain, like yet another dam had been built to keep the memory from trickling into his consciousness. </p><p>“Ah-ah-asthma-” Fred answered, and he had so much trouble with the word that Hal felt almost guilty for asking. “His in-in-haler is eh-empty. C-can you s-s-tay with him wh-while I go get his muh-muh-” </p><p>“Medicine?” Hal supplied, and Fred nodded eagerly. Hal looked down at Hiram’s bloody face: truthfully there was little he wanted to do less than sit next to someone who might croak at any minute. But these two were in need, and Hal felt it was rather his duty to help if he could, especially considering it was his fault that Marty and the others had stumbled across their dam in the first place. </p><p>“Okay,” he promised, and sat down on the riverbank next to Hiram as though to seal the deal. Hiram’s head flopped from side to side as Fred propped him up against a log, and his eyes slitted briefly open. Fred tugged a small white inhaler out of Hiram’s hand and pocketed it quickly. </p><p>“Th-thanks.” </p><p>“Don’t take long!” Hal begged, and Fred shook his head seriously, his eyes brown and steady. He had serious, honest eyes, the kind that made Hal trust him instinctively. His features were youthful and boyish, but there was something adult in his face.</p><p>“I w-won’t,” Fred promised, stuttering just once. There was a touch of pride in his voice. “I got a fast bike.” </p><p>Hal looked at Hiram as Fred took off, heading diagonally across the stream with a purposeful stride that suggested he knew the area well. Hal figured they must play down here often, and he remembered for a brief moment the fleeting loneliness he had felt when he’d heard their laughter through the brush. Hiram gasped for air, breath passing in long wheezes through his throat as his eyes moved behind their eyelids. Hal placed a hand tentatively on his shoulder, and Hiram cracked one eye open to look at him. </p><p>“It’ll be okay,” Hal said, with more reassurance than he felt. As quickly as Fred had departed, the hope that any bike was fast enough to reach Center Street Drug and back with real efficiency was quite an optimistic one. “He’ll be back soon.” He set about gathering all the largest stones he could find, placing them in a pile at Hiram’s side in case the older boys came back. It was Hal they really wanted to harm - but Hiram was defenseless in this state, and Hal leaving him was unthinkable. They would have to defend themselves and hope Marty hadn’t been able to recover his knife from the brush. </p><p>When he had amassed a considerable pile of rocks he sat at Hiram’s side to wait, listening to the stream bubble over the rocks and the jagged, whistling sound of Hiram breathing. Hal encouraged the smaller boy to breathe in time with him, a tactic he had read about in a book once, and felt relieved when Hiram’s panicked wheezing became somewhat more rhythmic. Fred’s bike <em> was </em> fast: it felt like no more than half an hour had passed before he was peeling back down the embankment on foot, a new white inhaler clasped in his hand. Hal told him as much, admiringly. </p><p>“Thanks,” said Fred, and tossed Hiram the inhaler in a soft, easy pitch, the type of throw Hal’s father had tried to teach him in their few games of catch before he’d died. Hal had noticed already that Fred stuttered less when he was <em> doing </em> something, his actions taking on an ease that he couldn’t attain in words. Hiram plunged the mouthpiece of the inhaler eagerly into his mouth and pressed the button, breathing deeply as the contraption emitted a soft hiss of compressed air. For a long moment both boys stood there and watched him breathe. Finally Hiram lowered the inhaler and flopped back against the log. </p><p>“Geez, thanks Fred.” Hiram wiped his bloody nose on his hand and grimaced when he took it away. “That was a real killer.” </p><p>“Not s-s-surprised, the way he h-h-hit you.” Fred sat next to Hiram and touched his arm, tilted his head up to see his bloody nose, and Hal had a nonsensical flash of an image from long ago - the painting of Jesus with the kids that had hung in the Sunday School room in their church back in Texas - <em> let the little children come unto me, yadda, yadda. </em> He shook his head, and the image went away. </p><p>“It wasn’t because of that,” said Hiram regretfully, taking another draw on the inhaler. The sucking, rattling sound filled the small clearing. “Was thinking about my mom finding out I had an asthma attack. Hey, no offense, but who the hell are you, anyway?” </p><p>Both boys turned to look at Hal, then, as though suddenly remembering he was there. Fred got up and dusted off the dirt that had stuck to his knees. </p><p>“You’re H-H-Hal Cooper, right?” Fred asked. He was as tall as Hal, but much thinner. </p><p>“Yeah. You’re Fred Andrews.” </p><p>“Y-Yeah. And this is H-H-Huh-” </p><p>“Hiram Lodge,” said Hiram, folding his arms across his chest. “I hate when you stutter my name, Fred.” </p><p>“S-Sorry.” </p><p>“Pleased to meet you both,” said Hal honestly, though it sounded stupid and stilted when he said it out loud, like something his mom would say. He shifted from foot to foot and cleared his throat nervously. </p><p>“You look like someone killed you.” Hiram said bluntly. </p><p>“Marty Mantle,” Hal explained, looking down at the remains of his sweatshirt. “And Darryl Doiley and Mike Minetta. They chased me down here.” </p><p>“T-t-typical,” Fred spoke up. “I h-hate those fu-fu-fuckers.” </p><p>A brief silence followed this proclamation, in which Hiram looked up at Fred with a sense of godlike respect. Hal, too, admired his use of the Eff word, a word he’d thought once or twice inside his head that afternoon but that he’d never had the gall or courage to say out loud. He stuck his hands in his pockets. </p><p>“I’m sorry they wrecked your dam.” </p><p>Fred just shrugged. “It wuh-was a baby dam. We w-were just f-fooling around.” </p><p>Hal looked over at the stream. He walked a few meters along the bank, studying the puzzle as he had when he was sitting with Hiram against the log. </p><p>“It’d be a lot better if you had some boards,” Hal spoke up finally. </p><p>“How’s th-that?” Fred looked genuinely interested. </p><p>“Well, if you had two boards, about this big-” Hal gestured with his hands. “You could put 'em in the water facing each other, and before the middle part could fill up with water, you’d fill it with rocks and stones and other stuff. The first board would lean back against the rocks, and I guess you-” </p><p>“Wuh-wu-we,” Fred interrupted. </p><p>“Huh?” </p><p>“We do it.” </p><p>Hal stared at him, astonished. Fred lifted his shoulders in a shrug. </p><p>“Me and H-Hiram are gonna be here tuh-tomorrow. If you c-came we could build it tuh-together.” </p><p>“Oh,” Hal answered softly. In spite of the pain in his stomach he felt suddenly, impossibly happy, so much so that the ache all over his body faded to a dull throb. He had to press his lips together with effort to keep from smiling like an idiot. “Well, anyway, the first board stays up on its own and you - we - could add another piece of wood to keep the second board up. Like this.” </p><p>He picked up a stick and drew a small diagram on the dirt. Hiram and Fred watched him do it. </p><p>“How do you know it’ll work?” Hiram asked, taking a puff of his inhaler. </p><p>“Why wouldn’t it?” asked Hal. He glanced down at the illustration, which looked sound to him. </p><p>“But how do you know?” </p><p>“I just know,” Hal answered simply. He wasn’t being smart, it was the best way he could think of to explain his confidence. Hiram surveyed him thoughtfully and then finally nodded his head. </p><p>“Okay,” Fred said, and clapped him on the back. “Tuh-tomorrow, then.” </p><p>“What time?” Hal asked, trying not to sound too pathetically eager. </p><p>“We usually get here around eight-thirty,” Hiram spoke up. Hal noticed that Hiram sometimes spoke for both of them, almost protectively. “Later if my mom finds out I had an asthma attack and puts me in the Emergency Room. FP might come too. He hangs around with us sometimes.”   </p><p>“FP J-J-Jones,” Fred explained. Hal knew of him peripherally - he was in the other fifth grade class. </p><p>“I’ll bring some boards,” Hal offered. “We got some in the garage.” </p><p>“R-right on,” said Fred. He bent and scooped a handful of river water to his mouth, which sent Hiram into a fit of disgust. </p><p>“Aw, Christ, Fred, you know what’s in that shit? Bacteria. Millions of tiny bacteria. My mom knew a guy who drank some river water and just dropped dead. Not to mention they pump the sewers out here. You’re probably drinking piss and shit.” He stuck his inhaler in his mouth and blasted it for emphasis. “Think about that. Human shit.” </p><p>“J-j-ust like the sh-shit that c-c-comes out your m-mouth,” Fred answered admirably, wiping his mouth with his shirt. Hiram shuddered and dabbed at the dried blood on his nose with the side of his hand. </p><p>“Listen,” said Hal happily, “I’ve got to go, but I’ll see you guys tomorrow.” </p><p>“Us too,” answered Hiram, and heaved a dramatic sigh. Some blood from his nose had flowed onto the collar of his shirt, and he pulled it away with his thumb and forefinger. “Geez, my mom’s gonna have an aneurism.” </p><p>“So’s mine,” offered Hal, looking down at his sweatshirt, and they exchanged a wry smile. </p><p>The three of them walked together out of the Barrens, Hal following Fred and Hiram, who knew the way. They stopped at a bridge to get Fred’s bike: a huge silver Schwinn that had seen better days, the metal rusted in spots and the paint badly chipped, a package carrier mounted above the wide back tire that could serve as an extra seat. It looked heavy, and Fred was sweating as he pushed it, but he managed somehow: a skinny kid with a bike that seemed better suited for someone three times his size. </p><p>At the crossroads between Kansas and Costello, Fred climbed astride the seat and waved goodbye. Hal watched as he tore down the road, the bike wobbling at first and then balancing out, gathering speed until it was only a blur of spoke and chain, the gears grinding and pedals pumping like hell. </p><p>“Why’s he got such a big bike?” Hal asked. His mother had a bike of her own, taller than his, but the Schwinn was not just an adult’s bike but a <em> tank </em>, the huge metal fenders so heavy that it must have outweighed its rider by forty pounds. </p><p>Hiram shrugged, but there was admiration in his eyes. “You should try riding it. He rides me double sometimes. I just about shit myself when he does it, if you wanna know the truth. It looks like it’s rusted through, right? But it goes fast, and I mean fast. Although you can get tetanus from that, you know? The rust. My mom knows a guy who had tetanus, his jaw locked up and they had to cut a hole in his face. Feed him through a tube. If you get tetanus, it goes all through your blood and you’re poisoned in a second. There’s nothing you can do.” </p><p>Hal was beginning to understand why Hiram spoke for Fred sometimes - it wasn’t only the absence of a speech impediment that spurred him on, but the absence of any kind of self-consciousness or filter. Hiram talked like there was a time limit and he was trying to get every last word in. </p><p>“You know what happened to his brother, right?” Hiram asked, looking sideways at Hal. Hal knew the basics, gleaned from whispered conversations between his mother and his aunt, but not the details, and he shook his head. </p><p>“He was murdered. The guy who did it ripped his whole arm off during that flood last fall. He bled to death in the street.” </p><p>“Geez,” said Hal, dumbstruck. He’d braced himself for the story, understanding that anything to do with murder was undoubtedly gruesome, but he felt nauseated by the thought nonetheless. “Do they know who did it?” </p><p>“No.” Hiram looked solemn. “He thinks it’s the same person who’s been killing those other kids. Betty Ripsom and all of them. But no one else’s got their arm ripped off, so the cops think it’s unrelated. Anyway, don’t go asking him anything about Oscar. He’s all frigged up about it.” </p><p>“Fair enough.” Hal stood there a moment, his hands balled in his pockets, and tried to push away the image of a kid getting their arm torn off. The socket of his arm tingled when he thought about it too much - or maybe that was residual pain from his roll down the Barrens. He watched Hiram take another puff on his inhaler. </p><p>“I think you guys are cool,” Hal said. He hadn’t meant to say it - it had just slipped out, like the tears that had come when Marty pulled his knife. Hiram looked at him with some alarm. </p><p>“Nah,” he replied, looking nervous. “Fred is, I guess.” He jerked his head when they reached Jackson Street. “This is me. See you tomorrow.” </p><p>Hal watched him as he walked off down Jackson street, fiddling with the inhaler he kept clutched in his right hand. He thought briefly of his library books, mangled in the gutter of Kansas street, but Hal wasn’t stupid enough to try to retrieve them. He would pay his two dollars in library fines, and hope Mrs. Starrett understood that it wasn’t going to happen again. </p><p>“Hey, Hiram,” Hal called. </p><p>Hiram turned to look at him. There was a space of some six feet in between them, but he came a bit closer to Hal, taking small careful steps over each sidewalk crack. “What?” </p><p>“If you’ve got a nickel, stop at the Rite Aid and buy a chocolate milk. You can pour it over your shirt and it’ll disguise the blood. Won’t work for me,” Hal looked ruefully down at his ruined sweatshirt, “but you’ve just got a little bit. Dried blood and chocolate milk look about the same.” </p><p>Hiram considered this, and his face broke into a small grin. “Hey, that might work. Thanks.” </p><p>“Good luck,” said Hal. Hiram gave him a salute and began walking down Jackson street again, his tiny shadow stretching long on the pavement as the afternoon moved towards evening. </p><p>Hal walked home, looking over his shoulder for Marty Mantle the whole way. </p>
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<a name="section0002"><h2>2. harry clayton goes fishing</h2></a>
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<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <em>"'It didn't hover,' he said. 'It floated. It floated. There were big bunches of balloons tied to each wing, and it floated.'"  - Stephen King, It. </em>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>Harry Clayton and Hal Cooper, though they had never met, had two things in common at the beginning of that summer: that they were both at the top of Marty Mantle’s Shit List and that they loved to read. The Shit List, a running mental record that Marty ministered to all year long with what limited cerebral function he could spare, denoted the sequence of kids that were due to have their brains kicked in by his engineer boots. There were other kids on the Shit List - Hiram Lodge, for the crime of being small and asthmatic, Fred Andrews for stuttering, and FP Jones for any number of unpleasant infractions during the school year where the younger boy had got up the courage to mock Marty to his face - but the two for which Marty entered the summer with a rabid and fanatical hatred of, bordering on insanity, were Harry and Hal. </p><p>Hal had not only escaped him by kicking him square in the balls, leading him down that cliffside to near-death in the barrens, but his refusal to let Marty copy off him during their end-of-term exam had landed Marty in summer school and brought down the ire of his father, the sadistic and brutal Richard Mantle who had been counting on Marty to help him out around the farm rather than re-learn basic arithmetic. It was his father who was responsible for the larger, more intense hatred that Marty felt toward Harry Clayton, a magnified and distorted version of the senior Mantle’s hatred for Harry’s dad. And though neither Harry or Marty ever put it into words, they both understood quite plainly the reason: that Harry and his family were Black. </p><p>The Mantles owned a small farm a quarter of a mile from the Clayton homestead, and Floyd Clayton, Richard enjoyed telling his son, had been trying to sabotage him for years. While the Mantles had toiled and worked tirelessly for their farm, the Claytons, he claimed, had plotted against them, asked for handouts from the public, and were conspiring to draw the police force onto their side. A prime example of this was when Richard had been jailed overnight when Marty was eight, after the Claytons’ entire flock of chickens had been slaughtered in the night. Seething, Richard had asserted that Floyd had done it himself for the insurance money, knowing the police would side against their innocent word. Marty, despite having seen the bloody gloves in the shed and the empty bottle of whiskey that pointed to his father’s guilt, nurtured a swelling, unspeakable rage on behalf of their family and decided then and there that he would treat the then-seven-year-old Harry Clayton to a good stomping as soon as possible. </p><p>Since then Marty had been treated to a litany of injustices that the Claytons were to blame for - when their well went dry or Richard lost a good amount of money gambling, when their tractor broke down or a storm felled a tree into their roof, when blight took their crops or Richard cut himself on the feed grinder, Marty’s father wasted no time in asserting that Floyd Clayton was to blame for it. And, well, when Richard broke his wife’s nose open over breakfast and sent Marty to school with a black eye, that was indirectly the Claytons’ fault too. It was due to the Claytons that they lived in a clapboard home that was one step above a tarpaper shack, and it was the Claytons’ fault that Marty had to be whipped with the business end of a belt several times a day to keep him under control. Marty’s fear and worship of his father became thus entangled in a seething, virulent hatred of the family, and had he had the chance to pound only one eleven-year-old boy that summer, he would have gladly turned his back on Hal Cooper in order to give Harry Clayton the goods. </p><p>Harry had managed to avoid such a punishment thus far: he was naturally fast and agile for his age, and this combined with the fact that he attended a different middle school - Neibolt Street Church School, at his mother’s insistence - had allowed him to dodge Marty’s wrath for most of the year. Yesterday, while Marty had been terrorizing Hal Cooper in the barrens, Harry had helped his father with the afternoon chores and curled up in their hammock to write in his thick spiral-bound notebook. When Harry woke just after dawn on the first day of summer vacation, the Mantles were the furthest thing from his mind. </p><p>Harry’s room was in the attic of their farmhouse, and the small circular window above his bed faced east. Looking out on the thin rays of the rising sun, a veil of mist hanging above the crops that promised a full-heat summer day, he felt a quiet and childish elation. He loved early mornings - the stillness of them, the privacy of the grey skies and sleepy fields. It gave him the same feeling he had at the beginning of spring, when the farm came to life after winter: a feeling of things waking up. </p><p>The three library books he had taken out last month were due. Two of them were hardcover volumes on Riverdale’s town history, which Harry had been taking careful notes from in his spiral-bound notebook. Two events interested him in particular: the 1962 fire at the Black Spot, and the 1908 Kitchener Ironworks explosion. Earlier that month, he had coaxed from his father everything he remembered about the night the Maine Legion of White Decency had burned down the primarily Black club, and had written down the pertinent details in his notebook as not to forget them. Having assembled a satisfactorily full account of the fire, his interest had been piqued by the infamous Easter explosion at the iron factory, which had prompted a month of tireless research. </p><p>The third was a book on birds. It was a hardcover, illustrated for identification purposes, and had Harry flipped to the back and studied the borrowing card tucked into its paper sleeve, he would have noted the name Mary Moore written several times in a girl’s untidy hand. The books were strewn across his bedspread: he’d fallen asleep engrossed in the larger of the historical texts, and the edge of the hardcover had left an imprint along his jaw. </p><p>Harry was careful never to keep his library books beyond the due date, despite the distance between the Clayton farm and the Riverdale library. The librarian, Mrs. Starrett, disliked when farm kids came into town to borrow from the library, undoubtedly imagining all the unpleasant fates that could befall her cherished paperbacks outside of the town’s centre. Harry had a good bit more reading to do that summer, and didn’t want to give her any reason to take away his borrowing privileges. </p><p>He dressed and went downstairs, rolling up the sleeves of the plaid flannel shirt he wore over his T-shirt and blue jeans. It was cooler outside than in the attic, but the local farmers had predicted a warm summer, and it would be hot by eight o'clock. Out the kitchen window, the mist hung low over the cornfields, the sky above an indecipherable white. It was an isolating feeling, but cheerful somehow, a feeling of being engulfed in sureness and safety and home. </p><p>Harry loved his town, loved the farm, even loved his chores from time to time: the satisfaction of fixing a rusted pump or a rotted section of fence, the bone-tired feeling of hauling rocks and hay, the way the hens clucked maternally at him when he went out to collect eggs in the mornings. He loved coming in at dinnertime and watching his parents kiss and tease one another, his mother in blue jeans and a checkered shirt, the two of them flirting like teenagers as though Harry wasn’t watching. He loved it when he got to work side-by-side with his father, how he smiled and clapped him often on the back as they hoed and picked and planted, doing the work that his father had done alone before he was born. </p><p>Harry understood that other kids his age got off with much less work than was expected of him, but he didn’t mind. His father was also remarkably generous in granting Harry time to himself. It was part of Floyd Clayton’s philosophy that every young man deserved the occasional day off to go fishing - and whether fishing was really what he got up to, he told Harry with a conspiratorial wink, that was up to him. </p><p>These no-questions-asked afternoons off would be signaled during the school year by a note waiting for him on the kitchen table, weighed down by a jar of honey or preserves. On ordinary days the note would list the chores Floyd Clayton expected his son to complete before dinner, but on fishing days, the note would excuse him from his work with a simple phrase. <em>A</em> <em>good day for fishing,</em> his father would write, <em>enjoy yourself.</em> On these days Harry practiced football, or read by the stream, or loped around exploring, or even sometimes went down to the creek and cast a line for real. There was a third point Harry Clayton and Hal Cooper would have agreed upon: they were both very lonely. </p><p>Other days the note his father left would be more of a scavenger hunt - <em> no chores today, </em> Floyd Clayton would write in his heavy, distinctive hand - <em> go check out the old train tracks by the mill. </em>These notes invariably led to some place where memory and present overlapped, places scarred or disused or damaged by history that Harry’s father knew his son would find fascinating. When Harry returned home they would talk about the town’s past, Harry delighted by what seemed to him like his father’s infinite knowledge, sometimes hurrying upstairs to scribble it all down in his thick, water-stained notebook before he forgot. It was his father who had instilled in him his love of history, more so than any of his teachers at the Neibolt Church School. When he touched the stone basin of the town fountain or the trolly tracks on Main Street he was struck by a delightful and frightening fascination with time itself, the dreadful strength and inevitability of it. </p><p>Today Harry expected a note about pitching hay or fixing the pump on the back water tank that had rusted through. Instead, after collecting the eggs from the henhouse, he came back in to find a scrap of notepaper that absolved him of any concern: </p><p>
  <em> First day of summer! A good day for fishing. Don’t go far.  </em>
</p><p>Harry ate a bowl of Wheaties as he contemplated the note. He had no plans apart from returning his library books, a matter that he had planned to clear up with a quick bike ride into town to the all-hours return slot on the library’s front door. He peered into the cereal box, decided he had about three more bowls to go before unearthing the decoder ring he wanted, and put the box back on the shelf. </p><p>The day yawned open before him, full and new and hazy with promise. Harry wondered, not for the first time, what it would be like to have someone to call on fishing days, a friend from the nearby farms that would sit by the brook with him and talk about everything and nothing. Mr. Chips, the family’s dog, was his regular free-time companion, but the old border collie contributed nothing to conversation except a listening ear and the occasional canine sigh. </p><p>There were indeed other kids around, sons of farmers whom Harry was mostly friendly with, (though the closest to him in both proximity and age was Marty Mantle, who was completely out of the question) but he was missing the kind of friendship that Fred Andrews and FP Jones took for granted - a comfortable love born out of deep, unspoken loyalty. Harry played football at the Neibolt Street Church School, and he played the trombone in the school band, which would perform on the bandstand in the park on the fourth of July. He looked forward to it as the first day he would see his friends from school, whom he’d been missing since the old bell above the schoolyard had sounded dismissal on the last day of class. </p><p>The other kids at school were perfectly friendly to him, and they got on great at practices, but that was all they were. Harry knew better than to ever ask one of his classmates to hang out on their own time. For one thing, an overwhelming majority of the Neibolt Street Church kids were white, and for another the Clayton farm was miles from the suburb where the other kids lived. The one time he had asked someone home, a kid named Peter Thomas who sat beside him at band rehearsals, Peter had given him a look of such surprise and pity that Harry had stammered a retraction and walked away. He had never tried again, but from that day forward he felt more conscious of the distance between himself and his schoolmates, a gulf that felt heartbreakingly hollow and empty on fishing days, when nothing would have pleased him more than to sit beside someone in the hammock and recount the details of what he’d learned from his library books that week. </p><p>As he loaded his library books into his schoolbag - the original contents had been unceremoniously dumped into the Church School’s recycling bins once the final bell had rung - he flipped one last time through his worn notebook to ensure he had taken all the notes he wanted to. The book fell open to a page at the very back, where he had recorded a list of names in clean, round letters. </p><p>
  <strong>Betty Ripsom</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>Cheryl Lamonica</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>Matthew Clements</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>Veronica Grogan</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>Oscar Andrews ?</strong>
</p><p>It was morbid, certainly, keeping a list of the children who had been found dead in Riverdale since Christmas (Oscar a few months before that, at the end of October) but Harry rationalized that he himself would want the facts of his death recorded as quickly and plainly as possible while the news was still fresh. It was important, he thought, to take notes of town history as it was still unfolding, or else you got disharmonious accounts like whether it was 88 or 108 confirmed deaths at the Kitchener Ironworks explosion, or worse, the whitewashed ambivalence of texts that confirmed the Black Spot fire as nothing more than an accident. </p><p>His habit of keeping interesting pieces of history in his notebook meant it seemed common practice to record the details of the murders, gleaning bits of conversation from his classmates or his parents’ friends when the Claytons had visitors. The first murder that everyone agreed upon as beginning the chain - Oscar’s waterlogged death, bleeding out in the gutter by the intersection of Witcham and Jackson streets with one arm torn free from its socket, was uncertainly declared to be an isolated event - was that of Betty Ripsom. She had been fourteen years old when she’d been found on Lower Jackson Street, frozen, her remains ripped wide open, just after Christmas of that year. </p><p>The next murder was in March, when a fisherman had hooked the arm of Cheryl Lamonica’s floating corpse while fishing a stream just east of Riverdale. Cheryl had been sixteen, already had a child, and spent a lot of time around unsavory men, which allowed the residents of Riverdale to dismiss the case as the work of some jealous boyfriend. Harder to explain away was three-year-old Matthew Clements, reported missing in late April and recovered the next day when an Eagle Scout leader stumbled across his body on a hike. </p><p>After those four murders, the seven o'clock curfew had been imposed. Harry’s mother became frantic when he stayed out past dinnertime, bursting into tears when Harry turned up at seven-thirty one spring evening with a creel of fish. His father had stayed wisely silent while Harry’s mother dressed him down for scaring her, but the look of deep worry Harry had seen in his dad’s eyes was somehow worse than being yelled at. </p><p>“Be smart, Harry,” his father had cautioned him as they worked hauling rocks from the field the next day. “You just be smart.” </p><p>Two weeks ago, a boy from Riverdale Public had looked into a drain on Neibolt street and seen a clump of tangled, wet hair. This would be the corpse of Veronica Grogan, who had been in the fourth grade at Neibolt Street Church School and who was supposed to play the piccolo in the fourth of July concert. Veronica’s was the murder that had cemented the theory of a serial killer beyond reasonable doubt, who many townsfolk believed to be some kind of sex fiend - his mother’s friends spelled the word when they talked about it around Harry, as though at age eleven stringing together three letters would be out of his comprehension. The last line of his father’s note had therefore clearly been added for his mother’s benefit - <em> Don’t go far.  </em></p><p>Harry closed the notebook, tucked it in between the two history books, and swung the bag onto his back. Mr. Chips approached him with a hopefully wagging tail as he went outside, and Harry bent to give his rusty head a pat. </p><p>“Uh-uh,” said Harry, as Mr. Chips thumped his tail enthusiastically against his leg. The collie was getting up there in age, and it was a long way into town. “I’m taking my bike. You and I can go fishing later.” </p><p>Mr. Chips sighed as though in resignation, setting his head down on his paws in the shade at the corner of the barn. Harry patted him, and filled the dog’s water dish at the pump. </p><p>“You hold down the fort,” he told him. “I’ll be back soon.” </p><p>He grabbed his bike from the side of the barn and pushed off, heading down the long gravel lane that connected to Witcham Street a few miles closer to town. As he passed the Mantles’ farm, he was grateful to see no one was up yet. There were a multitude of backroads he could have taken into town to avoid passing the Mantle homestead, but there was a fine line between very brave and very stupid and while Harry on the whole was a very smart boy, he was not immune to wobbling over the divide. </p><p>After about twenty minutes of hard pedaling he had crossed Route Two and was coasting down the hill past the sewer where Oscar Andrews had been found. The mist he had spotted from his bedroom window hung about the streets of Riverdale in a fog, shrouding the cheerful suburban houses like the atmosphere from a monster movie. He was sweating under his flannel by the time he reached the library: the humidity hung low and tactile in the bathwater air. The glass tunnel that connected the adult library from the Children’s Library was hidden entirely by mist, so that the two halves seemed disembodied, their silent windows like the eyes of some deserted pirate ship. </p><p>He dropped the three books into the return slot, where they made a series of thumps as they landed safely inside. He hesitated briefly with his hand on the bird book, but finally let it fall through. </p><p>Harry Clayton had no interest in ornithology. He had taken out the book because he had been trying to better understand something that had happened to him that spring, when the warm weather had just begun and he and his father were waking the Clayton farm from its long hibernation. </p><p>For no particular reason he began biking past the library, up to Bassey Park where the canal flowed under the Kissing Bridge. Across the bridge was Riverdale High School, and in a few more years Harry would be a star player on their football team. But it wasn’t the sight of the school that drew him, it was the smell of Bassey Park: a salt-and-sea smell though they were miles from the coast. The mist and the smell made him think of photos of lighthouses, old capes and craggy rocks that he had never visited before. </p><p>This train of thought led him to remember his dreams - he was reminded suddenly, like a curtain lifting, that he hadn’t woken peacefully after all. He had tossed and turned for a couple of hours in the middle of the night, plagued by restless, unsettling images that floated just out of his memory now that he tried to recall them. </p><p>In the cheerful farmhouse kitchen his list of the dead had seemed morbid: now he felt an eerie sense of unease as he remembered the murders. Betty Ripsom. Veronica Grogan. Oscar Andrews. Grown-ups weren’t sure if that last one was connected… but standing at the edge of the canal in Bassey Park, breathing in the salt air from forty miles away, Harry Clayton was very much convinced. </p><p><em> It’s all connected </em>, he thought, and shivered, thinking for some strange reason of the Black Spot again… and the Ironworks explosion. And the bird. </p><p>The bird that had a great orange mouth and yellow feet. </p><p>He began biking home by way of Kansas Street, a route that would take him past Memorial Park, where a great stone birdbath marked approximately where the Black Spot had once stood. As he biked he was aware of the fog lifting, the sun beginning to warm the back of his neck and arms with the promise of a hot summer afternoon. A seagull cried as he passed the town dump, Harry glancing down into the Barrens as he biked past. It made him think of the sea again - and the bird, the one he had seen at the site of the long-exploded Kitchener Ironworks, the one for whom there was no entry in the library’s bird book. </p><p>Harry willed himself to think about fishing instead. He thought it would be a fine afternoon to spend really fishing, and maybe he and Mr. Chips would come home with a rainbow trout or two to present to his mother. Had he tried his luck fishing Sweetwater River he might have run into trouble - it was now only an hour from the time Hal, Hiram and Fred had planned to meet and build the dam that would flood out the Barrens west of Memorial Park and leave everything east of it mysteriously dry - but Harry decided as he biked past the intersection of the now-vacant Church School that he’d try the creek that cut behind the Clayton property instead. He’d recently seen a good number of juicy trout down there that begged to be caught on a hot summer day like this one. </p><p>Standing on his pedals, he biked up the hill towards home, his flannel shirt flapping behind him. As he crested the hill he remembered the bird again, and this time the memory stuck. </p>
<hr/><p>Every spring the Claytons would set up scarecrows among the fields of corn - corn all the way around the back of the house, and squash, pumpkins and peas in the front, at his mother’s insistence. The corn grew higher than any of their other crops, high enough that she felt claustrophobic and closed-off if the ears extended beyond the top of the farmhouse windows. The west field was kept for hay, and to the east they raised beans and potatoes. On top of the scarecrows, they would set up what his father called mooseblowers - a can with both ends trimmed off and a waxed string tied through the middle. When the wind blew through the can it emerged in a frightening, shuddering kind of cry that deterred hungry birds from landing on the crops. </p><p>They did the planting in May, and the picking in July. Before there were crops, Harry’s first chore was to help with the rock-harvest, loading the back of his father’s pickup with the heavy stones that would damage the harrow. Despite the never-ending stream of work to do, Harry had arrived home one spring morning in April to a note held down by a jar of strawberry jam at his plate: </p><p>
  <em> No chores. Take your bike and check out the Ironwork ruins on Pasture Road. Don’t go near the cellarhole. Bring back a souvenir, and be back before dark.  </em>
</p><p><em> Be back before dark, </em> of course, meant the same thing as <em> don’t go far </em> - don’t worry your mother. This was just after Matthew Clements had been found, and the town was in a state of hushed terror. Harry, at the time, was unconcerned with the possibility of a perverted sex-fiend walking among them and slaughtering children who went unwisely out to play after seven o clock. He had been distracted, making furious notes in his notebook about the Ironworks explosion for the past few days, and had a thick account rife with gory details from newspaper clippings he’d perused - the latest that one eleven-year-old victim’s body had been recovered two days before his head, which had turned up perched in the fork of a woman’s tree in her back garden. </p><p>The explosion had happened on April 3, 1908, though an accurate count of the dead hadn’t been possible until much later. The Ironworks factory, which had stood out on Pasture Road on the very edge of the Barrens, (in only a few years it would be the site of Riverdale’s newest shopping mall, where anxious preteens and mothers with strollers would queue up for early entrance to JC Penney and the Gap) had been chosen as the site for Riverdale’s then-annual easter egg hunt. (The tradition had been put to bed by nightfall, once the count of dead children passed fifty.) </p><p>Harry’s latest library book estimated the number in the hundreds, and of those hundreds most of them were children under the age of ten. Five-hundred pastel-coloured eggs had been hidden in plain sight in the factory halls - propped up on beams and gears and polished desks for the flocks of kids who had been turned loose into the factory to find them. Every machine in the factory had been shut down: there were smiling guards standing on every floor to nudge kids away from anything that could pose a danger. Even the most contemptuous accounts of the tragedy admitted that the catastrophic explosion that had leveled the factory was, to this day, wholly unexplainable. </p><p>Despite his interest, Harry had never visited the site of the disaster. He’d biked past it once or twice, a titanic ruin sitting a bit back from Pasture Road that was barely recognizable as what it had been, but he had never stopped. Perhaps he’d thought he’d be in trouble for it - there was a bleached out No Trespassing sign flapping loosely against the chain-link fence - or perhaps it was the air of foreboding that hung about the place like an electric current. There was an unmistakable imprint of bloodshed there, a ripe and sour feeling of something unfinished. </p><p>As he propped his bike against the fence that bordered the dirt road, Harry had tried to picture the crumbling ruin as it had been that day in 1908, when the gleaming factory was a source of town pride. He imagined it much as the Emerald City from Oz - triumphant smokestacks and towers peaking high above the horizon. </p><p>Once he left the relative safety of the path, however, and began to pick his way across the barren field, he was struck by somber and disquieting reality. The field was choked by debris, the grass scorched by the sun and littered with broken glass that sparkled up from underfoot. One of the great smokestacks had fallen on its side, and when the wind blew across the mouth it made a sound eerily like the mooseblowers. Harry climbed onto its back, pulling himself up easily - he was a tall kid, strong for his age and had he only been a few years older he wouldn’t have had to worry about Marty Mantle quite so much - and began to walk along it. The sun-baked red tiles were surprisingly stable, and a soft breeze pushed his hair back from his skull. </p><p>He looked down as he crossed the smokestack, eyes sweeping the rubble for some item that would impress his dad. It amazed him that there was still so much of it - debris showering the field that no one had bothered to haul away in the eighty-one years it had stood vacant since. A concerning thought came to him - the possibility of finding a bloodstained Easter dress, a blown-apart shoe, the severed bones of a child’s hand - and he shook it quickly away. The police back then would have found all there was to find - if not, he was certainly not the first to trespass on these ruins. Still, he felt safe on the back of the smokestack, safer than he would have been walking among the overgrown grass and debris. Most of it was uninteresting: scraps of twisted metal, lumps of stone, rotted and shattered wood that might have once been furniture. </p><p>The somber silence of the place made him feel eerie. He could hear the tap of his shoes on the red tiles, the warm spring sun beaming silently down on his neck and casting a shadow ahead of him. For no particular reason he remembered a feature he and his father had stayed up to watch on the late-night channel: a replay of an old movie about a giant, fearsome bird. </p><p>It hadn’t frightened him then - he and his father had laughed at the corny special-effects, Harry taking casual aim at the bird’s eye with an imaginary slingshot whenever it was onscreen just because it made his father laugh harder. Now, inexplicably, he began to appreciate the disclaimer that had appeared onscreen at the end of every commercial break, a corny jingle accompanied by a fuzzy screen reading <em> this feature contains scenes that are intense and frightening! viewer discretion is advised.  </em></p><p>As he reached the far end of the smokestack, his eye fell on a wide depression in the grass some eight feet away. This had been the basement of the Ironworks building, what his father had referred to when he had warned him away from the cellarhole. </p><p><em> Dad said not to go in, so I won’t </em>, he thought, and nevertheless jumped off the smokestack into the grass to be closer to it. A sparkle of silver caught his eye, and he bent down to retrieve a tiny cog, no bigger than his palm. </p><p>That was a good souvenir, and he thought his dad would be impressed. Nevertheless he glanced up once more at the cellarhole, tucking the silver cog in his pocket as he did so.</p><p>
  <em> I just want to see it.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> No, you’ll fall in.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Not if I’m careful.  </em>
</p><p>The thought of falling into some depression in the ground and being trapped out here where there was nothing but the wind and empty ruins should have scared him more than it did. As it was, he brushed the possibility aside. Of course, his father knew where he was, but this reassurance didn’t occur to Harry until much later. Instead he felt a different sort of protection guiding him towards the hole, a child’s naive belief that the rules would bend in his favour. </p><p>The wind blew eerily across the smokestack, and he felt suddenly exposed in the field, like a mouse would with a hawk circling above it. He wandered closer to the yawning cellarhole, stepping very carefully to avoid the areas of ground that looked like they might collapse into its throat. A few patches of ground at the edge had already given way: they opened well-like holes along the rim of the cellar, some clumps of grass and dirt dangling like baby teeth. Harry walked as close as he dared and then glanced down, expecting to see a bunch of old iron, or at the very worst, a headless skeleton. </p><p>What he saw was much worse. From end to end, the cellarhole of the Ironworks building had been transformed into a giant nest. Rather than the broken machinery he’d expected, the hole was stuffed with layer upon layer of straw and tree branches, woven together to create a wicked and foul-smelling cradle. In the centre of it all was an enormous bird with a bright orange breast and a long, horribly pointed beak, above which two dark, intelligent eyes glistened like fresh tar. Its feathers were the dirty gray of a pigeon’s, and ruffled as though it had been in countless fights. Bits of feather and down clogged the weaving of the nest, scattered around the cellarhole like a sickening gray carpet. </p><p>Harry took a huge step back. His foot went straight through a rotted plank of wood, and he fell back on his hands and rear end with a cry, convinced the fragile ground was about to give way and send him straight down into the nest. He had time enough to realize his mistake - <em> I just stepped on a piece of wood, everything’s fine, I can still get up and run </em>- before the bird’s sharp eyes fixed on his face over the rim of the cellarhole, its wings unfolding with a horrible sliding leathery sound and its beak opening soundlessly to show the rows of jagged teeth that marred the surface of its orange tongue. </p><p>Harry pulled himself up, ran several paces, and then looked back. The monster bird rose out of the cellarhole, the beat of its ten-foot wingspan whipping the air around him like a hurricane, blasting him with the dark, fetid smell of the nest and several clumps of old gray feathers. Harry began to run again, his head down like he was making a play for a spectacular touchdown, his body propelling him instinctively over lumps of jagged stone and back towards the road from which he’d come. </p><p>A shadow swooped over him like a hawk’s, the black vision rippling noiselessly across the yellow grass. Harry stopped short, and the bird turned high above him, descending from the front now, its mass of grey feathers blotting out the sun. It’s beady, human eyes regarded him with fury as it came closer. It smelled like old dust, like something unspeakably ancient and foul. </p><p>The bird dove for him with a cry, and Harry cut sharply to the left, zig-zagging to avoid its subsequent lunge. The bird’s beak snapped at the air just behind his shirt collar, and Harry drove his feet hard into the ground, fighting against the wind generated by the flapping of the bird’s massive wings. </p><p>He put his head down and ran, arms pumping at his sides, but the bird was faster. The shadow rippled over his head again, and this time its talons scratched his shoulders, tearing into the fabric of his shirt. He felt his feet lift briefly off the ground and wiggled fiercely, landing on his feet when the bird dropped him and faking back, aiming first for the cellarhole and then sprinting back towards where his bike sat against the fence. </p><p><em> It’s faster than me, </em> he thought, panicked, <em> it’s faster than me so I have to hide, I have to get out of the open. </em>He saw the smokestack coming up ahead of him and aimed for it, realizing with regret that the entrance was still far ahead of him. He faked right and hurdled over a fallen beam, the bird’s talons grasping uselessly at the air where his shoulder had been a half-second earlier. </p><p>Something struck the back of his head, something hard and fluffy but sharp enough to draw blood. Harry kept running, sprinting full-tilt towards the toppled smokestack. Climbing was out of the question - it would only bring him and the bird closer together - but if he reached the very front he could hook inside and the bird would be too big to follow. </p><p>His foot caught a lump of wood and Harry nearly tripped, catching himself with an extra-wide leap and continuing to sprint through the stitch in his chest. What kind of bird was this? Some kind of prehistoric beast, a dinosaur? Was it - and this he hardly dared to hope - was it a dream that he’d wake from in a few minutes, tangled in the sheets in his attic bedroom or passed out by the brook behind the farm? It had to be. It had to be because such creatures didn’t exist outside of late-night movies, only this bird was worse than that one because this bird was terrifyingly and unmistakably real. </p><p>The red tiles of the smokestack blurred into a streak in his periphery as he sprinted for the entrance. <em> It won’t fit, it won’t fit, it’s too big to fit. </em>This he repeated to himself like a prayer as he closed the gap, the overgrown grass tearing at his legs and his heart pounding in his ears. He reached the front and hooked around the edge of the smokestack, in time for the bird to swoop down on him with a cry, its taloned fingers ripping hard into his arm. Harry shook it off once more and pitched forward, tripping over the lip of the smokestack and taking several hard, echoing leaps within its depths. He had made it. He was safe. </p><p>The inside of the smokestack was dank and dusty, the floor coated with slippery mud, and Harry ran into the shadowy dark, gasping as he came up against a dead end. The other end of the smokestack was buried underground: there was only one way in or out. Behind him, the bird beat its wings furiously, generating a wind that rushed through the tunnel towards Harry’s face. He covered his ears with his hands - the bird’s furious screams echoed in the chamber of the damp tunnel, bouncing all around him above the thunder of its beating wings. </p><p>Suddenly the only source of light was blotted out. “NO!” Harry screamed as the bird began to squeeze into the smokestack. Its folded wings scraped the tunnel walls, dislodging the tile, and Harry realized his oversight too late: the bird’s body was malleable, feather and flesh rounding out a narrow-boned frame. The sharp beak came ever closer, teeth awaiting him in narrow, spiny rows. “NO, YOU CAN’T! YOU CAN’T!” </p><p>But it was doing it, little by little, the eyes like tar pits glimmering in the dark. The sharp talons scrabbled on the rim of the entrance, and Harry dashed backward into the smokestack until there was nowhere left to go. The tunnel got slightly tighter here: there was a chance that the bird would withdraw. The possibility that it would become stuck and die, encasing Harry in a rotting underground tomb, was too horrible to think about. <em> Please God, </em> he thought senselessly, apologizing silently at once for all the times he’d dozed off during sermons at the Neibolt School. <em> Please. Please, God, no.  </em></p><p>Harry’s back hit the end of the smokestack, blinking wildly to adjust his eyes to the dark. All he could see of the bird was the faintest shine of its eyes, though the rotten smell and rustle of feathers filled his other senses in the absence of sight. “GET AWAY FROM ME!”, he screamed, and lobbed a chunk of tile from the smokestack floor blindly into the darkness. </p><p>From far ahead of him, he heard the tile strike feather with a sound like a stone dropping onto a pillow. The bird did not withdraw. Dropping to his hands and knees, Harry grabbed a second piece of tile and aimed straight for the shimmering eye, a guttural cry tearing out of some deep place inside of him. “GET OUT!” he screamed furiously, his fingertips scrabbling at the floor for another piece. He grabbed a handful of tiles and began to pelt the bird with them, one after the other, serving them up with the speed and force with which he’d pitch a blistering fastball. “GET OUT OF HERE! GET AWAY!”</p><p>The bird cawed in dismay and continued to scrape its way toward him, the tiles thumping harmlessly off its feathered body. The rotten avian smell was choking him now, plugging his senses like a chloroform rag. His hand closed around another chunk of tile - this one was huge and sharp, sharp enough to slice into his palm like a knife. Harry tightened his grip on the tile, feeling warm blood drip down his wrist from his hand, and then threw it with all his might. </p><p>The bird’s scream of pain almost shattered his eardrums. The wings began to flutter up and down, scraping and dislodging dust and rubble from the sides, air buffeting down the smokestack towards Harry’s face and the motion allowing for the barest shaft of sunlight to fall into the gloom. The tile had struck with a raw, wet sound and as the bird pulled back Harry finally saw why - the chunk of tile was currently embedded in the bird’s left eye, leaking black fluid and pink pus down its feathers. </p><p>The bird pulled out of the smokestack with a scream of pain, sun pouring in like blood from a wound, and Harry sprinted madly towards the circle of light at the entrance, a dozen bits of tile cradled in the front of his shirt. Hysterical, he began pelting the chunks of tile at the bird, unaware of the bloody smears he was leaving on every piece. The bird saw him and snapped its beak, lunging toward the entrance of the smokestack, but Harry threw a large jagged piece of pipe into its gullet that stopped the bird in its tracks. </p><p>“GET AWAY FROM ME!” he screamed as the massive bird danced near the entrance, its head bobbing in frustration as it tried to figure out how to snatch him up. “I’M GOING TO KEEP HITTING YOU I SWEAR TO GOD! I SWEAR TO GOD I WILL!” </p><p>The bird retreated again, unfolding its huge wings and launching itself back into the air. Harry stayed crouched on the ground, his body shaking violently, clutching tight to a piece of tile in each hand. For a second he dared to hope it was gone - then he heard the unmistakable sound of the bird landing heavily on the top of the smokestack, where only twenty minutes before he’d been walking. It was sitting directly over his head. </p><p>Harry stared at the circle of light ahead of him, paralyzed with terror. The talons of the bird clicked mockingly above him, daring him to try to retreat out into the light. He was conscious for the first time of how badly his body ached, his back stiff and his joints sore from crawling, a raging pain in his shoulder as though he’d torn something from throwing. Acting on impulse, he threw a rock at the roof of the smokestack above him, hoping the sound would frighten the bird into flying away. The rock struck the ceiling with an echoing thud, but the bird just clicked its nails impatiently and began to pace. </p><p>Breathing heavily, Harry began to run up and down the length of the smokestack in trips, carrying all the rocks and pieces of loose tile he could find and stacking them into a pile near the entrance. Whatever the bird intended with him it couldn’t be worse than his brief thought of being trapped in here with no light, the bird’s decaying body blocking his path to freedom. He would do anything to keep the bird out of the mouth of the smokestack, keep himself from being trapped back in the dark. </p><p>A scaly yellow foot was the first thing he saw of the monster, descending from the sky directly in front of the entrance. The bird landed in front of the smokestack, and Harry began to peg it furiously with handfuls of tile, throwing with speed and accuracy he hadn’t known himself capable of. His arm moved from the pile to the air like a machine, throwing chunks of tile that gouged bloody cuts in the bird’s scaly yellow legs. </p><p>“GET. OUT. OF. HERE!” He punctuated every word with a throw. Something wet streamed down his face, and Harry realized he was crying. “I’M GOING TO KILL YOU, I SWEAR TO GOD!” </p><p>The bird ducked its head to the mouth of the smokestack and Harry threw the last piece of tile with all his might. It hit home, splattering what remained of the bird’s eye across its face. The orange mouth opened horribly, the rows upon rows of teeth seeming to multiply, and in the split second before the bird screamed and withdrew Harry saw something that made no sense at all: the three orange puffs lined up like tumbleweeds across the centre of its great tongue. </p><p>Light poured into the smokestack again, a great hurricane of dry air announcing the bird had taken back to the sky. Harry waited anxiously for it to return, for the heavy thump of its body settling back on the tiles above him, but the field was silent. A breeze coaxed a faint mooseblower whistle from the mouth of the stack, a low tone that rippled out over the somber ruins like a foghorn. </p><p><em> It’s a trick, </em> he thought, and stayed crouched on the smokestack floor. He wiped the tears from his cheeks with the back of his hand, and the skin came away streaked with dirt and dust. Both knees of his blue jeans were torn, and his shirt hung open at the collar where it had been ripped in two. He waited until the realization struck that he was no longer expecting a surprise attack - his legs were simply too numb with fear to move. </p><p>Harry gathered his bravado and grabbed as many broken tiles as he could, loading them into his pockets and into the front of his shirt. Finally he approached the mouth of the smokestack again, closing his hand over the largest piece of tile before he stepped down from the smokestack’s rim. At once he pivoted, expecting to see the bird bearing down on him from behind. But as he turned quickly in a circle, his heart pounding hard in the back of his throat, he realized the bird was nowhere to be seen. </p><p>The sky above him stretched cloudless and blue from one end of the field to the other. The bird had disappeared. </p><p>Walking quickly, his neck aching from turning it frequently from side to side, he made his way across the field towards his bike. Letting a handful of tiles fall to the surface of the road, Harry leaped onto his bike and pedaled fast, tiles clattering out of his shirt and landing around his feet as he pumped his legs like the devil, riding at a speed that would have impressed even Fred Andrews. Blood flowed from his cut hands onto his handlebars, adrenaline blotting out his vision so that he relied on instinct to guide him back past the Kissing Bridge and into town. He was alert and watching for shadows, expecting at any minute that the bird would come sweeping out of the sky to carry him off to its nest, but though he could see the elongated shadow of his own bike, stretched cartoonishly out on the surface of the road before him, no dark kite-like form appeared on the streaming pavement to whisk him away to death. </p><p>Behind him, the ruins of the Ironworks gleamed red in the evening sun. </p><p>His father was in the front yard when Harry pedaled furiously up the driveway and jumped off, his bike continuing without him for several feet until it smashed into the side of the barn, setting off Mr. Chips into an excitable fit of barking. His father looked up at him in concern, and Harry grasped for something suitable to explain his appearance in tattered clothes, biking to beat the devil though the ruins were eight miles behind him. </p><p>“I crashed my bike,” he admitted when he found his voice, showing his father the blood on his hands. “There was a big pothole. I’m okay.” </p><p>His father seemed hesitant to accept this explanation. He reached for Harry’s bloody hand, but Harry kept his distance, not wanting his father to feel him shaking. He pretended to be interested in fixing the chain on his bicycle. </p><p>Floyd Clayton hesitated, sensing a lie but not the cause of it. “You didn’t see that Mantle boy, did you?” </p><p>“No,” answered Harry, and the honesty in his voice must have convinced his father, because his face relaxed somewhat. </p><p>“Anything broken?” </p><p>“No, I’m all right.” Harry took a few steps towards the farmhouse, intending to wash up before dinner. His heart was slowing somewhat, but he could still see the bird in his mind’s eye, the intelligence in those coal-black eyes and the talons that had torn at his skin. </p><p>“It’s spooky out there, isn’t it, by those ruins.” </p><p>Harry suppressed the urge to laugh, though it wasn’t very funny, and nodded his head. He showed his father the silver cog from his pocket wordlessly, presenting it in the palm of his hand. “I brought this home.” </p><p>“That’s nice.” His father hesitated, cleaning a wrench on the front of his shirt. “I was thinking about it, Harry, and I wish I hadn’t sent you out there. Old places like that can be dangerous. You won’t tell your mother, will you?” </p><p>“No.” Harry shook his head, looking down at his bike. Below the rim of one wheel, he could see a single gray feather caught in the spoke. </p><p>“Probably best for both of us.” His father gave him a smile and squeezed Harry’s shoulder. This time Harry let him do it. “You sure you’re alright?” </p><p>“Just tired.” </p><p>“Well, okay.” Floyd closed the hood of the truck, putting the wrench carefully back in his toolbox and latching the lid. “Let’s get on in for supper. I love you, Harry.” </p><p>“I love you too, Dad.”</p><p>They had gone together into the house, and Harry had tried to forget the sound of the bird’s cries, and the ancient smell of death and ruin that had clung to its wings. He hadn’t made a single note of the incident in his notebook, deciding that some things were better left to disappear from memory. </p><p>Two months later he had scoured the library bird book from cover to cover looking for a species, but his bird was nowhere to be found. Nothing even came close. </p>
<hr/><p><em> Forget the bird, </em> he thought on the first day of summer, as Mr. Chips dozed on his leg by the bank of the stream. Harry had already caught and cleaned a good-sized trout, and he had laid it carefully on a bed of leaves in his creel. The water rushed merrily over the rocks at his feet, the sun shining brightly through the trees and landing gently on his skin. <em> Forget it, because it was probably a dream anyway, and it was a long time ago.  </em></p><p>He was young enough that April seemed properly far away on that morning in June, and yet at the same time he felt definitively that the bird had not been the end of it. No, something was just beginning: the knowledge gave him an antsy, crawling feeling, like eyes on the back of his neck. He felt that something was coming, something unspeakably important and very grave. The first day of summer was part of it. </p><p>As he fished, some seven miles away, five kids were building a dam. </p>
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<a name="section0003"><h2>3. the dam in the barrens</h2></a>
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<p></p><blockquote>
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    <em>“Eddie stuffed the aspirator into his mouth and, like a man committing suicide, pulled the trigger.” - Stephen King, It. </em>
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</blockquote><p>By eight-thirty, Hal, Hiram, and Fred had made good headway on the dam. The mist that had hung about the Barrens in the morning had lifted, and it was a perfect day for mucking around - a light breeze kept the worst of the insects away and the sun shone hot and bright through the trees above their heads. Hal, wearing his second-best sweatshirt despite the heat, gave tentative orders that Fred and Hiram carried out to the best of their ability, bolstering his confidence until the three of them fell into an efficient, unselfconscious rhythm. Following Fred’s lead, Hal had rolled up his pants to the knees to stand in the running water, while Hiram worked slightly higher up on the bank to keep his shoes dry. </p><p>Using the boards that Hal had laboriously carried down into the Barrens, (stopping every few blocks to huff and puff and be grateful that Alice Smith wasn’t around to see him), they seated two planks of wood upright in the stream bed and packed rocky sand into the space between them. Fred and Hiram were visibly discouraged when the current began to sweep these fillings out, but Hal used Fred’s shovel to add mud from the bottom of the river, planting large stones between the boards to seal the fill. With this done, water began to pool almost immediately behind the board furthest upstream, which made Hiram shriek with unabashed delight and which stirred Fred to clap Hal happily on the back. The wordless sentiment was so genuine that it made Hal embarrassed and almost blindly happy. </p><p>As a final touch, Hal chose the thickest of the remaining boards and strutted it up against the downstream side, burying one end securely in the riverbed. Fred held the downstream board for stability as he did so, the sparkling water flowing cool around their ankles. </p><p>“I-I-It won’t s-stand u-up,” Fred cautioned, staring at the precarious-looking support, but Hal shook his head. </p><p>“Sure it will. You can let go of the board.” </p><p>“How do you know?” Hiram spoke up from above them, and Hal found he didn’t have the words to explain it. It wasn’t understanding so much as instinct, the way you could tell the second after you left the diving board whether you were going to hit belly first or not. He shrugged, not altogether helplessly. </p><p>“I just do. The water will push it harder into the bank.” </p><p>Fred released the board, and the dam held fast. In a few moments, the puddle grew to the size of a wading pool, sucking the stones they’d used to cross the stream under the expanse of water. The spreading pool oozed slowly larger, eating up the riverbed little by little and forcing Hiram to retreat further downstream to avoid getting wet. </p><p>“There’s water escaping!” he yelped as water began to run around the edges of the board. </p><p>“Let it go. Some of it has to run off.” </p><p>“Why?” Hiram asked, but Hal had nothing more to offer than the same blind assurance. </p><p>“I can’t explain it, it just does. It’ll be okay, look.” </p><p>Despite the runoff, the pool was growing steadily. They sat on the bank in a line and ate the lunches they’d brought with them, letting their feet dangle just above the current. Hiram’s mother had packed his lunch, which contained a disturbing amount of raw vegetables in individual plastic baggies and a ham-and-cheese sandwich with the crusts cut off. Fred had packed his own and had nothing but a sloppily made peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich and a Tab. Both of them watched in awe as Hal unloaded his spread onto a nearby log: two baloney sandwiches, a peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich, a hard-boiled egg, two Hostess cherry fruit pies, three chocolate-chip-oatmeal cookies, and a Capri Sun. </p><p>“Tr-trade you?” Fred asked hopefully, holding out his PB&amp;J, and Hal obligingly swapped it for the peanut-butter-and-banana. </p><p>Now he munched the hard-boiled egg as he watched the water deepen. For all the certainty that he’d had that the dam<em> would </em>work, seeing the evidence before his eyes brought a swell of accomplishment and power. Behind the upstream board, the pool was creeping up to the edges of the banks and leaking into the grass below their feet. The stream behind them was swollen with the excess, the darkening water now completely covering the stones, leaving an ominous silence in the place of the usual musical babble. On the other side the water had dried almost completely, exposing the naked streambed. The small escaping trickles of water had become flowing streams in their own right, and the banks on either side of the dam were crumbling into them, altering the shape of the land. </p><p>“N-n-not su-such a b-baby dam,” Fred remarked proudly, and the others agreed. </p><p>“Hey,” said Hal suddenly to Hiram, unwrapping his second Hostess Cherry Pie, “How did the chocolate milk work out?” </p><p>“Pretty good,” Hiram replied, and the two of them shared a smile over Fred’s head at his obvious confusion. Hal had a strange, poignant thought, unexpectedly adult - <em> this is what it’s like to have friends. One day I’ll remember this, and I’ll want it back. </em>“My old lady bought it, hook, line, and sinker. Probably saved me from getting dragged down to the hospital for an X-Ray. If you break your nose little bits of bone can shoot down into your heart, you know.” He wiped his mouth somewhat prissily on a napkin from his bag. “I wanna know what your mom said when you came home leaking Hamburger Helper all over the place. Shit, if I came home like that, mine would have had me on a ventilator.” </p><p>Hal lifted his huge shoulders in a polite shrug. He was getting used to Hiram’s erratic way of speaking. “It wasn’t so bad. She was out at the grocery store, so I took a bath real quick and threw out my clothes. I said I tripped on the school steps to explain the bruises.” </p><p>“I-Is t-that w-why yuh-you’re w-wearing long s-s-sleeves?” Fred asked. “To hide th-the b-b-b-” </p><p>“Nah,” said Hal and flushed. “I always wear this. Because I’m-”</p><p>“Fat?” asked Hiram tactlessly. He took a loud bite of a carrot. </p><p>“Yeah,” answered Hal, feeling an uncommon sting of defensiveness. “So what?” </p><p>“Y-yeah,” echoed Fred mildly. “S-so what?” </p><p>Hal sat with that for a while. <em> So what? </em>He thought, and felt a little better about everything. It didn’t matter down here, that was for sure. No one was calling him Tits, and he thought maybe he wouldn’t even mind if they did. </p><p>“Luh-look,” Fred stuttered when they had finished their lunches and packed the bags away. He pointed at the dam, and Hal was disappointed to see what he had already worried about: the current had swept out some of the mud between the boards. Without constant surveillance and a team of kids working to shore up what was lost, the dam would likely collapse as soon as they left it unsupervised. They got to work gathering larger stones to strengthen the fill, but the mud they packed into the cracks would always eventually be worn down. </p><p>“It’d be better if we had cement,” Hal moaned, but no one among the three of them knew where to get cement at such short notice, and that plan was vetoed out. They stood in a line and watched the water rush around the wooden board. </p><p>“If w-we b-build up the s-sides it might b-buy us tuh-time,” Fred spoke up, and Hal straightened up a little, recognizing that he was onto something. “We c-can go tuh-to the dump and f-find some more muh-muh-material.” </p><p>Hal was about to suggest they form a two-man team to go to the dump, leaving one person to guard the dam, when they were interrupted by a splash from the direction of the swelled river, followed by a boy’s loud voice. </p><p>“Fuck!” Another splash, louder and nearer, and a mucky squelching sound. “It’s wetter than Hiram’s mom’s vagina down here.” </p><p>Hiram whirled immediately towards the voice, lips pursed, hands curled into fists. Hal watched in amazement as a dark-haired boy splashed his way out of a cluster of trees a few yards upstream, kicking water out of the way without bothering to remove his shoes or socks. There was another boy on his heels, stepping more carefully, and Hal recognized the first boy as FP Jones. He was wearing a Hawaiian-print shirt over a baggy pair of shorts, and his eyes were magnified behind enormous coke-bottle glasses. </p><p>"I hate you!" Hiram declared venomously as FP came closer. FP's only response was to give his cheek a hearty pinch. Hiram whacked his hand away. "Stop that! I hate it when you do that!” </p><p>"Good to see you, Freddie." FP cuffed Fred on the back of the head and stopped short when he saw the spreading pool behind the dam. FP's eyes widened behind the thick lenses of his glasses, and he immediately splashed into the deep water, socks and all. "Holy shit." </p><p>"Shit is right,” Hiram declared as FP waded up to his waist. “That's sewage water, you know.” </p><p>FP splashed him, and Hiram let out a piercing, ear-splitting scream, higher than any girl Hal had ever heard. He leaped backward up the bank onto safe ground - the water was now leaking higher, beginning to lap at the grassy knoll where they’d eaten lunch. </p><p>“Asshole!” </p><p>Water dripping from his legs, FP came charging up the bank towards Hal. "Crikey, he's a big one, Fred!" FP took off his glasses to peer at Hal, polished them on his shirt, and stuck them back on his face. "He’s a beaut!” </p><p>To Hal's dismay he dropped to his knees and began to do a series of energetic bows, speaking in his Crocodile Dundee voice all the while. “Good on’ya mate! Where’d ya find this whopper! I’ve never seen such a mighty croc!” </p><p>"Ignore him," said a voice behind them. Hal turned to see the second boy stepping more carefully over the running water. This boy had short, curly red hair and freckles, set off by the blue neckerchief tied around his neck. With a start, Hal realized as he came closer that it wasn’t a boy at all, but a girl wearing a Boy Scout uniform, with her hair cut close to her head. She saw him staring and gave him an odd half-smile. </p><p>"Are you quite done?" Hiram asked FP, who was still breathlessly gesticulating on his knees. FP opened and closed his hand, reaching out towards Hiram’s back pocket as he wheezed for breath. </p><p>"Give me that."</p><p>Hiram obediently handed him his inhaler, and FP took a sharp blast. Immediately he reeled back onto the bank and fell over dramatically, choking and grabbing his throat. "Jesus Christ, Hiram, that tastes like dead dog shit!” </p><p>"Give it back!" Hiram shrieked.</p><p>"It tastes like kissing your mother." FP dangled the inhaler over Hiram’s head so that he had to jump. "Its got my spit on it now. My spit and your spit. We basically just kissed. You can catch some kind of disease from that, can't you?" </p><p>With an enraged yell, Hiram suddenly leaped on FP and started pummeling him with his fists while he kicked him savagely in the shins. FP just brushed the smaller boy off - Hiram’s head barely came up to his shoulder - but Hiram kept doggedly kicking him, raising a red welt on his bare leg. </p><p>"Ow! Ow!” </p><p>"C-c-cut it out," said Fred. He didn't say it in any particularly domineering way, but both Hiram and FP fell silent and looked at him. Fred raised his voice a little, indicating the dam with one hand. “T-the dam’s going to fall apart if we don’t build it up, so we need to h-help each other.” </p><p>“All in due time, Freddie.” FP strode over and thrust his hand out to Hal, pumping the bigger boy’s hand energetically. Hal thought maybe he was trying on a new accent, but he couldn’t be sure. “FP Jones. You must be the guy who made this dam, since I wouldn’t trust these two wet ends to find a turd in a toilet.” </p><p>“Speak for yourself, FP,” Hiram retorted from behind them. </p><p>“Oh, you mean it was your idea, Hiram? Jesus, I’m sorry.” He started bowing again, kneeling in the mud and theatrically kissing Hiram’s feet. Hal looked to Fred for help, hoping he would intervene, but Fred looked as though this was something that happened every day. </p><p>“Can you stop it?” Hiram was yelling. “Are you doing this right now, really?” </p><p>FP popped up from the mud and pushed his glasses back up on his face. He grabbed the redheaded girl and squeezed, turning her proudly to face Hal. “This is Mary. She’s a girl, but she’s got bigger balls than these two chumps. Balls the size of cantaloupes. Also, she’s Jewish. Killed Christ with her bare hands.” </p><p>“Hi,” said Mary to Hal, acting as though FP wasn’t there. She put out her hand for him to shake, and he took it. Her grip was warm and very strong. </p><p>“Hi,” Hal said, recognizing her. “You were in Mrs. Douglas’ class.” </p><p>“I’m in the school band, too,” Mary replied. FP tightened his grip and leaned over her shoulder. </p><p>“Sure is. Plays the clarinet. Means she knows a thing or two about fingering, am I right? Which she frequently-” </p><p>Mary elbowed him hard in the ribs. </p><p>“S-shut up, FP,” said Fred. </p><p>“You’re losing your dam, pardner,” FP declared, slinging an arm around Fred’s neck and switching to an uncertain southern drawl. “Allow me to mosey on down and fix ‘er up for ya.” </p><p>With a hearty splash, he launched himself feet-first into the pool of water and started splattering chunks of sod wildly up against the heap of rocks, windmilling his arms like a lunatic. Hal watched this warily. Hiram looked over at Fred and caught him smiling. </p><p>Hiram had been friends with Fred and FP since elementary school, and FP had been driving them both crazy just as long. The main problem with FP was that he couldn’t stand still or shut up for two seconds. When they got their end-of-term reports at Riverdale Public, FP’s marks for comportement - shit like whether or not you did your homework, when teachers told you whether or not you were a delight to have in class - were right down the toilet. He never listened in class, and he was always doing that high-pitched laugh of his, like a donkey braying. FP’s bullshit was constantly getting him in trouble with adults, and more frequently, big kids like Marty Mantle. Hiram had seen FP tell ol’ Marty to his face that every time the big M took a dump, he probably had to look up the instructions. </p><p>Hiram flinched just thinking about it. Fred loved him half to death and Hiram was a little crazy about FP himself… but he could also drive you batshit. Take the cheek pinching, for instance. And the Voices. </p><p>Crocodile Dundee and the Southern Cowboy were only a small selection of FP’s Voices. He’d been working on his impersonations since the third grade, and they’d never got any better. One day when they were swinging the hammock in Hiram’s garage, FP had told Hiram that his life’s ambition was to be a stand-up comic or a radio deejay. Hiram had been supportive, but he foresaw some problems with this dream: for one thing, FP was funnier to himself than anyone else, and for another, all of his Voices sounded pretty much like FP with varying stages of a head cold. </p><p>These shortcomings were obvious to everyone else, but FP was pretty convinced he was going to be famous one day, so his friends were too nice to tell him the truth. And the truth was, they liked him too much to hurt his feelings. FP was a nuisance, all right… but he was also charming in his weird sort of way, and decent to have around for a lot of reasons, not least of which for what FP referred to as <em> having some good chucks</em>. Hiram had had his share of good chucks with Fred and FP… and friends like that didn’t come along very often, especially if the whole school thought of you as a sissy because you had to honk on an asthma inhaler while the other kids were in gym. In that case, you had to take whatever chucks you could get. </p><p>Fred and Hal joined FP in the water, while Mary and Hiram hunted down pieces of sod on the dry banks to pass down to them. Hiram’s first impression of Hal was that the bigger kid was the shyest person he’d ever met, only by the time the dam was on its way to being done he was giving out orders like a real general. Once they’d patched up the worst of the erosion, Hal announced that some of them would have to go down to the dump to find more supplies, while one or two kids stayed behind to keep the fill from wearing down. </p><p>Hiram stayed behind - he could only imagine the apoplectic fit his mother would have if she knew he was climbing around among dirty nails teeming with tetanus and rusty bedsprings and old needles in the dump. He shivered just thinking about it. A lot of kids in Riverdale liked to go down there to goof off in old junked-out cars and stuff, but Hiram wasn’t among them. It was just about the dirtiest, riskiest place you could be - it was where people threw their <em> garbage, </em> for fuck’s sake, all the shit that was too gross or dangerous to keep in the <em> house </em>- but no one else ever seemed to match his warnings with real concern. </p><p>Once they’d built the dam up as best they could, he and Hal sat back down above the pool. The water level continued to rise: the stream had swelled to a completely different shape now, and the sandy banks and lush grass around it had turned into a bog. Hiram moved his feet out of the way, wondering just how much of it was sewage. Even if it wasn’t, he didn’t want his feet wet: that was how colds got started. </p><p><em> Colds and pneumonia, </em> his mother’s voice shrilled in his head. <em> And with your weak lungs, Hiram, pneumonia could be fatal, could lead to a breathing tube and an iron lung and God only knows what else. You’re delicate, Hiram, you’re a very delicate boy and you have a weak system. You must always be careful, and you must never, ever put your feet in the water.  </em></p><p>FP wasn’t the only one with Voices. Hiram knew a good deal about Voices - except his was just one voice, his mother’s, and he heard it clear as a bell in his head whenever he was mucking around down here or riding double on Fred’s bike or taking a lick off a popsicle someone else had already started. Sometimes Hiram thought about defying it, especially when Fred was the one asking - but then he remembered the risk of AIDS, or meningitis, or a debilitating staph infection, and he invariably shook his head no. </p><p>It occurred to Hiram sometimes that the rest of them never worried about these things, and they were still alright - hell, he’d seen FP eat someone’s chewed up gum off the arcade floor once and he was still kicking - but bad asthma like his could muck your lungs up really good, and if your lungs were in trouble the whole rest of you was probably shot as well. He had been a really sick baby when he was born, his mom had told him that often enough, and he’d almost died about four times before he was six months old. If you had a track record like that before your first birthday, you had to be careful with shit like sticking your legs in the water. </p><p>Very careful. </p><p>The others came back after an hour or two, FP and Mary carrying opposite sides of a huge car door, and Fred balancing a sheet of corrugated steel siding on his head like a canoe. They planted the car door along the edge of the dam where it stuck out like a broken bird’s wing, and buried the steel siding in the mud at the other side. These additions blocked off the water’s escape around the sides, and after a good hard half-hour of lifting, they’d built the fill between the boards into a huge, impenetrable wall of sod, earth, and stone. </p><p>Exhausted, they took to higher ground to admire their handiwork. The place they’d eaten lunch was now completely underwater: Hiram could see the fallen tree branch where Hal had laid out his baloney sandwiches as a shimmering dark shadow under the surface. FP took out a pack of cigarettes and passed them around, and Hiram watched bug-eyed as Fred took one without hesitating and stuck it in his mouth. </p><p><em> Lung cancer! </em> The mother in his head shrieked. <em> Fred will get lung cancer! Holy shit!  </em></p><p>He opened his mouth to say something, and then shut it again, waving away the package when it came to him and chewing nervously on his thumbnail. Fred lit his cigarette and coughed on his first draw, but nobody ribbed him about it. If it was anyone else, they would have laughed, but Fred was their leader - the guy who could figure out something to do on a rainy day, who made everyone listen to you when you were being ignored, who would kill himself racing to the drugstore for your asthma medicine. They never said as much, and if you had asked any of them they’d say there <em> was </em>no leader - but they knew it all the same. It was a comforting knowledge, ordinary and safe, like knowing your parents would have dinner on when you came home. </p><p>Hiram didn’t know the word yet, couldn’t explain what it was about Fred that made him different. Years later in high school, the word <em> charisma </em>would make him hesitate in his sampler, eyes straying out the window to a daydream of another summer day, the sparkle of sunlight off water in the mounting pool behind the dam. All he knew was that he wanted Fred’s approval so badly sometimes it made him crazy, and the thought of Fred thinking he was smart, or good, or brave, was almost worth risking tetanus for. </p><p>“You sure?” FP was asking, waving the cigarettes in Hiram’s face. Hiram slapped his hand. </p><p>“There’s a warning label right on the pack, dickweed. You can get cancer from that. You wanna get your lung amputated?” </p><p>“Ssh!” Mary pointed directly above them, at the rustling green canopy of trees over their heads. She had been sitting with her back against a tall oak tree, her head tipped back contentedly against the bark. Hiram looked at all of them, dozing in the sun by the brook, and felt a mellow tickle of comfort. They were a good group of pals, the kind you could have a lot of chucks with. “Tanager.” </p><p>They all shut up and looked at the bird. Mary had every species of bird in Riverdale down cold. On most days in the summer she carried with her a real pair of binoculars and a notebook, fastidiously checking and cross-checking any of various bird books she owned before making careful notes of her sightings. She could sit still for ages if she was waiting for a certain bird to land by the Memorial Park birdbath or the Bassey Park bridge, even in sleet or pouring rain. Mary was tough and smart, and Hiram admired her as much as he admired any of the guys - had in fact only remembered she <em> wasn’t </em> a guy a few days ago, when Fred had almost punched Hunter Malloy out for putting her on skins when they played shirts and skins for baseball. </p><p>“Is that what you’re going to do all summer?” FP asked. He kept the cigarette dangling from his lip when he talked, which Hiram knew he thought made him look like James Dean. “Look at birds?” </p><p>Mary looked around at them. “I don’t know, what are you guys going to do?” </p><p>“Anyone wanna go see a movie tomorrow?” FP asked. He exhaled a long stream of smoke. “I’ve got ten bucks saved up from mowing lawns, and that werewolf movie’s supposed to be really gory.” </p><p>“That’s rated R, dingus.” Hiram piped up. </p><p>“Maybe for you. The ticket girl’s into me.” </p><p>“B-b-bullsh-shit,” Fred said confidently. </p><p>“Would I bullshit you?” FP put his hand on his heart. “I’m telling God’s truth right now.” </p><p>“You are literally so full of shit it’s not even funny, FP.” Hiram retorted. </p><p>“I don’t have any money,” Hal confessed. </p><p>“Yeah,” spoke up Hiram, energized, “And no one wants to see your stupid movie, dude. Are you seriously going to spend all summer inside the movie theatre?” </p><p>“Beats spending it inside your mom.” FP threw his hand up to Fred for a high-five, which went ignored. Mary tiredly pulled FP’s arm back down. </p><p>“Beep beep, FP.” </p><p>Hiram scratched vigorously at his sock. “Guys, are you sure we’re not sitting in poison ivy? My legs are itchy.”</p><p>“You probably have crabs.” </p><p>“Shut up!” </p><p>"Look how dry it is," Hal marveled. His eyes were on the rapidly drying streambed. "I bet some of those rocks haven't seen the sun for ages."</p><p>Mary blanched. "Guys," she said tentatively, "You don't suppose by draining the river like this any bodies would wash up do you? Kids like Betty Ripsom and the others?" </p><p>"Which one was Betty Ripsom again?" FP asked. He had flopped down flat on his back and held his cigarette aloft with one hand. "She hot?" </p><p>Mary looked incredulous. "No,” she snapped. “She wasn’t.” </p><p>"Well, Geez, don't be so hard on her. Bad enough if she got all chewed up and left in this crappy place."</p><p>“Do you ever shut up?” Hiram snapped, and darted his eyes meaningfully at Fred, who was staring off at the opposite bank. Hiram didn’t know much, but he knew you didn’t talk about people getting chewed up when the brother of one of those people was sitting right there. FP’s mouth fell open as if to form a sharp retort, and then he shut it quickly enough that his teeth clicked together. The look that came over his face was contrite and completely out of character. </p><p>"Sorry Fred,” he mumbled, and looked down at his shoes. Fred didn’t seem to notice. </p><p>Silence fell over the group for a second, broken only by the lap of the water below. Fred kept looking off into the distance, his knees drawn up to his chest. Hiram didn’t like the look on his face. It was as though he hadn’t heard FP speak at all. Finally Fred stubbed his cigarette out and looked around at them, but the pleasant sparkle in his eyes was gone, replaced by something grave and worried. </p><p>“I n-n-need t-to t-tell y-you g-guys suh-something,” Fred said quietly. </p><p>The second he said it, Hiram knew it was bad. A cold chill ran down his back, and his stomach did a turn that sent ham-and-cheese sandwich back up into his throat. </p><p><em> I don’t want to hear it, </em> he thought. <em> Whatever it is. No, sir, I don’t.  </em></p><p>He looked around at the group, hoping someone would start talking about something else. Fred wouldn’t talk if someone else was talking first, because of his stutter. <em> Make a joke, </em> he urged FP silently. <em> Say something stupid, for cripes sake, like you always do. </em>But he didn’t. </p><p>“Sure Freddie,” FP replied instead, taking his cigarette out of his mouth. “What’s up?” </p><p>Fred closed his eyes, as though summoning the words. “Yuh-you guys c-c-can’t l-laugh. It’s c-c-crazy but I swear I’m not muh-making it up. It r-really huh-happened. Suh-suh-swear you won’t luh-luh-luh-laugh.” </p><p><em> We will laugh, </em> Hiram wanted to say. <em> We’ll laugh you right out of the club, so why don’t you keep it to yourself. </em>He looked at his hands and saw they were trembling. Mary turned to look sideways at him, and seeing his worry reflected back in her eyes nearly knocked him cold. Hiram knew instinctively that Mary had the same feeling: that once Fred said whatever was making him stutter so badly there would be no going back. For any of them. </p><p>Hal’s eyes were big and round - only FP was still puffing on his cigarette, oblivious to the group’s tension. Hiram had a stupid urge to jump up and do a little dance, yelling <em> hey hey, look at me, look at me, </em>like the rodeo clowns who distracted bulls on TV. But he couldn’t. It was Fred, after all. Fred was their leader. </p><p>“We promise,” said Mary solemnly, and Hal did a gesture of crossing his heart. </p><p>“Yeah, muchacho,” said FP. “We won’t laugh.” </p><p>Hiram nodded miserably when they all looked at him. Fred took a deep breath. </p><p>“Ah-ah-alr-r-ight,” he said, stuttering as badly on that word as he sometimes did on full sentences, and then he started to talk. </p>
<hr/><p>The night after he left Hal Cooper and Hiram Lodge at the intersection of Kansas and Costello on the first day of summer, Fred went into Oscar’s room. </p><p>Oscar’s bedroom had been untouched since his death. Fred’s father had gone in once and begun to pack Oscar’s clothing into cardboard boxes, but his mother had run up the stairs screaming: <em> Don’t you dare take his things! Don’t you dare, </em>and Artie Andrews had cursed at her and gone out to the garage, leaving the clothes half-boxed. Later Fred saw his mother re-hanging them in the closet and crying. </p><p>His parents were downstairs watching TV. Fred had given up trying to sit with them on nights like this one, tensed silently on the couch between them as if carved from marble, afraid even to breathe as if one misstep would fling his family off balance; a space on the cushion to his right that would have housed Oscar’s wiggly body perfectly, where Fred could have reached over to pinch his brother or hold his hand at the scary parts. He was hungry. He was starving for some scrap of his parent’s attention, the briefest gesture of warmth, for his mother to even place a hand on the back of his neck as she’d once done or his father to laugh patiently when he told a joke, Fred begging them with pleading eyes to even look at him. But his parents were cold in Oscar’s absence, not just to him, but cold in a way that chilled every room of the house, cold like they were carved from ice. They wept silently in separate rooms and ate dinner at opposite ends of a table that was a gulf as wide as the ocean. They looked over and through Fred as though he was a ghost, as if it was him who had died. </p><p>Fred’s heart was pounding as he opened the bedroom door. If you had asked Hiram Lodge what Fred Andrews was afraid of, he would have told you nothing, or at least very nearly. But that was a lie. As he stole into his dead brother’s room with his spine taut and his mouth dry, Fred Andrews was afraid of his brother’s spirit, the possibility that Oscar would crawl out from under the bed leaving great smears of blood from the torn socket of his arm, or that the closet door would creak open to show him hanging among the clothes from the hood of his yellow rain-slicker, his eyes white and empty and crawling with death. That this dead Oscar would sense he was to blame for the unspeakable thing that had happened that rainy Sunday and would reach out for him with cold, grasping hands - </p><p><em> Stop that! Stop it! </em> Fred screwed his eyes shut against his fears, ashamed for thinking them and yet no less terrified for the shame. It was bad enough that Oscar was gone, that Fred would never teach his little brother to hit a fastball again or be dragged around trick-or-treating before dark on Halloween, it was bad enough without him imagining Oscar as a monster from one of FP’s horror movies. And yet unspeakably, he felt closer to his brother in his fear, closer as though love and fear were not opposite sides of a string but the same knot. Better to be afraid than to be hollow, like his parents were, because at least in this way Oscar was still somehow alive. </p><p>The room that had been Oscar’s was painted blue, with a small wooden dresser and a kid-sized desk and chair beneath the window. Across from the bed was the dreadful closet with its folding, white-painted door. Oscar’s things were still everywhere: his stuffed toys lined up on the dresser with dusty, unseeing eyes; a tin of jacks and toy soldiers on the floor; a line of books and comics - a few were Fred’s, borrowed - stacked neatly in the cubby next to the desk, their colourful spines facing out. Everything was exactly as it had been in October, but with a slightly stale, untouched air, the smell of a museum exhibit or a classroom in summer. </p><p>There was a newspaper on the desk with the front page missing, and a tin of wax. Oscar had stashed the tin in his room to avoid returning it to its proper place in the basement, because he had been afraid of the basement stairs. (The missing page of newsprint had become a boat that now floated, capsized and waterlogged, somewhere in the Riverdale sewer system.) Oscar hadn’t been afraid of many things, but he was afraid of the dark. And he was afraid of the basement. </p><p>The Andrews basement had the sort of wooden stairs that had no backs, the kind of stairs that made you very well believe that something could stretch out of the dark and grab your ankle. Fred descended them at a sprint, afraid of falling through, but Oscar had a more paralyzing concern: that there were monsters that waited unseen in the darkness right behind the wooden steps, breathing on your ankles, waiting for a kid who would descend slowly enough to be yanked backward into the gloom. </p><p>The basement as a whole frightened Oscar: the precarious steps, the furnace that crouched like a brooding monster in the back corner; but it was the dark that scared him most of all: the fact that you had to reach trustingly into the black void to pull the hanging string of the bare lightbulb above the stairs, his certainty that one day he would reach into the blackness and grope and grope and find no string at all, or that his hand would come up against the awful fleshy face of something tall and soft, with sharp, pointed fangs. </p><p>He explained this in detail to a bemused Fred one night as they huddled together in Oscar’s twin bed, after a late spring storm had caused a power outage from Jackson Street to West Broadway, and Oscar was too afraid to sleep alone. By the time Oscar got to the part about the face, Fred told him to shut the hell up and go to sleep. But Oscar’s little hand had fitted trustingly into his as he slept, and Fred didn’t let go of it. Not once all night. </p><p>Now Fred touched the bed with one hand, the bed his brother would never sleep in again, and his eyes began to sting with tears. He curled his small hand into a fist and pressed into the duvet, a blue hand-me-down patterned with cowboys on bucking broncos, and it all came to him in a burst: that Oscar was gone, Oscar who had once been so afraid of the dark, who had fallen asleep holding his hand, and that Fred loved him, then and forever, that this love had nowhere else to go anymore but to rise inside his body until he drowned. He let this great pain build and build inside him until there were tears raining down his cheeks, and then he pushed them impatiently away with the back of his hand and turned to face Oscar’s closet door.</p><p>He gripped the handle and pulled, bracing himself for Oscar’s rain-slickered corpse to swing out of the gloom, but all he saw were the sweaters his father had folded and that his mother had replaced to hang forever in the dark. Fred reached for the top shelf and took down Oscar’s album of photographs, which he held to his chest as though carrying something of immense value. He took two steps back and closed the door, breathing out in a long, shaky exhale before he set the album down on the bed. </p><p>MY PHOTOGRAPHS, said the gold embossed letters on the alligator-skin cover, and below that was an aged strip of masking tape, curling up at one edge. Oscar had printed his name on this strip of tape in his best printing: PROPERTY OF OSCAR ANDREWS AGE 6. </p><p>Fred smoothed the tape down - the curled edge sprung abruptly back up - and pulled the book into his lap. The leathery plastic stuck to his thighs, the book heavier than he’d expected, as heavy as a bible or a dictionary, something much older and more significant. He opened the cover across his knees. </p><p>The pages were a heavy cardstock, each photo attached by four paper slats at each edge. The contents were a mishmash of images: the three school portraits that Oscar had sat for in his remarkably short life, some family pictures of the Andrewses on holidays and vacations, and several pages filled with snapshots that had been taken long before Oscar was alive and given to him by his parents: Artie and his brothers as kids, shots of aunts and uncles they’d never visited, even some photos that Artie had picked up at various flea markets and garage sales and thought Oscar would like. Oscar had coveted the album and often bothered adults for new pictures. When no one had anything to give him he would sit for hours turning the pages, studying the old photos with the rigor of a historian. </p><p>Over half the album was blank. Fred rifled through the pages to the last occupied slot, his hands moving almost of their own accord. The final photo in the album was Oscar’s first-grade school picture, which had been taken only a week before he died. In it, Oscar wore a goofy, slightly aimless smile: he was looking just off to the right of the camera, squinting his eyes as if against the sun. His mother had combed down his hair, which lay in a smooth wave over the crown of his head. Fred stared at it and felt, not for the first time, the lingering vestiges of the long hug Oscar had given him before he’d gone out into that storm. </p><p>Fred held the book and looked at the picture for a long time. He was just about to put it back on the shelf when it happened. </p><p>The Oscar in the picture turned his head. His eyes re-focused on Fred’s face, and his silly picture-day smile broadened into a real grin. An evil grin. The pinpricks of light that had been captured in his eyes from the photographer’s flash glittered with an expression of hate. </p><p>He winked. </p><p>Fred dropped the album like it was made of hot iron. The Oscar in the picture turned his head even further, his eyes tracking Fred’s movement as he scampered away on the bed. It would have been impossible to mistake his grimace for any kind of smile: Oscar’s face was twisted into a look of pure malice. </p><p>Fred grabbed the album and made to throw it - his hand touched something wet, and with horror he saw his thumb and forefinger had sunk slightly into the page, leaving the skin that was touching the paper soaked with blood. Colour began to well up from the picture as if from a cut, darkening just below the surface of the cardstock and spreading into pools that ran down the album in crimson streams. Blood pattered on Fred’s ankle, a few drops landing on the bucking cowboys on the duvet. The dark stain rushed across the surface of Oscar’s image, slashing across his throat, obscuring all but his eyes, which were still turned to Fred with that cruel, deadly glare. </p><p>Mute with horror, Fred flung the album as hard as he could. It hit the opposite wall with a thump that left a spray of blood on the wallpaper, as though a massive mosquito had been swatted by a giant’s hand. Fred sprang off the bed as the book landed right-side-up on the carpet, still open to Oscar’s bleeding portrait. Blood ran soundlessly out of the crack in the spine and left a darkening pool on the blue carpeting. </p><p>Fred ran for the door and turned back at the doorway. The smear of blood on the wallpaper was arranged in a crescent-moon, like a jagged smile. Below it, blood was pumping out of the album as though from a heart. </p><p>Fred sprinted out of Oscar’s room and down the stairs, slamming the bedroom door behind him. </p>
<hr/><p>No one moved when Fred was done telling his story. FP went on puffing on his cigarette, but Mary and Hal looked grim. Worse than grim. Hiram looked at them both and saw what was surely mirrored in his own face: fear and recognition. </p><p><em>No, </em>Hiram thought miserably, <em>no, I don’t want to remember that.</em> <em>It wasn’t real. I don’t want to think about it. I won’t think about it. </em></p><p>“It’s t-t-true,” insisted Fred, his face bright red from the effort it had taken to speak. He looked from one face to the next, breathing hard, his stutter worse than Hiram had heard it in a long time. “I suh-suh-” </p><p>“We believe you, bud.” FP put an arm around Fred’s thin shoulders and looked at each of the others in turn. Hiram saw that even if FP didn’t believe Fred himself, he’d fight down anyone who dared say they didn’t. “Right?” </p><p>Everyone nodded. Hiram bobbed his head up and down miserably, even though he wanted nothing more than to jump up and say Fred had it wrong, that pictures couldn’t move and books couldn’t bleed and that was the stupidest story he’d ever heard, so why didn’t they all just forget it and go back to talking about FP’s dopey werewolf movie. </p><p>Fred looked from one face to the next. His face was still flushed, and he was breathing hard. “H-h-has eh-eh-anyone e-else suh-seen a-anything luh-luh-like-” </p><p>“I have,” said Hal. Hiram wanted to scream. He looked in the bigger boy’s face and saw something very worried and very solemn. “I saw something last winter. Across the bridge from the Canal. But it wasn’t on the bridge, it was way out on the ice.” </p><p>“W-w-what w-w-was it?” Fred asked. Mary’s eyes were very wide with concern. </p><p>“It was a mummy. Like in the movies. Only this one looked old, like a real mummy would.” Hal looked from one to the other. “And it was wearing… I know it doesn’t make sense, but it was wearing a clown suit. With big orange buttons.” </p><p>Something lurched in Hiram’s stomach, and he thought he was going to be sick all over his high-tops. </p><p><em> No, I don’t want to remember. I’m not going to think about it. </em>That was worse than thinking about getting tetanus from the dump or coming down with lung cancer. He took out his inhaler and honked a large breath on it, his hand shaking around the white plastic. </p><p>Hal was describing what he’d seen out on the frozen river to the group, something about balloons that drifted against the wind. Hiram got another crazy urge to jump to his feet and tell them all to shut up. His breathing was so tight that he could feel every whistling breath he drew in, gasping like he was sucking air through a straw. </p><p><em> Can we stop talking about this? </em> He wanted to scream. <em> This is summer! We’re kids! I can barely breathe! I’m sitting here having a fucking asthma attack!  </em></p><p>He stuck his inhaler in his mouth and sucked it dry while Hal was talking. Fred’s eyes swept over to him when Hal was done, and Hiram looked quickly down at his feet. </p><p>“Wuh-wuh-what about y-you, M-M-Mary?” Fred asked. Hiram peeked at her from the corner of his eye. </p><p>“No,” said Mary and looked away, her face pale. </p><p>“Wuh-wuh-was t-there suh-something?” </p><p>“No! I told you!” She jumped up and walked several paces away from them, her arms around herself like she was cold. Hiram looked at her hunched back and thought, <em> please, Fred, let it go. Please, before it’s too late. None of us want to know. None of us want to think about it. It’s summer for fucks sake! It’s summer!  </em></p><p>“So can only virgins see this stuff?” FP spoke up. “Is that why I’m not seeing this shit?” </p><p>“Shut up, FP.” said Mary and Hiram together. Fred pulled out from under FP’s arm, looking betrayed, and FP lifted his shoulders in a gesture of helplessness. </p><p>“I’m just asking a question.” </p><p>“Sh-sh-sh-shut up!” Fred said. </p><p>FP had no comeback for that. </p><p>Hiram stared at his feet. He had the feeling of trying to stop something that had already been put in motion, like they’d all sat down on a merry-go-round and he was dragging his feet and skinning his hands raw, trying to slow the thing down. He looked up, caught Fred looking at him, and felt something shift in the air, like tectonic plates bumping against one another below the earth. Water ran soundlessly up against the boards of the dam. He thought he was going to vomit when he opened his mouth, but all that came out was: </p><p>“I saw it too.” </p><p>Everyone looked at him. Hiram stuck his inhaler in his mouth and sucked hard, readying himself for the words he’d have to say out loud. </p><p>“The clown.” </p>
<hr/><p>Only it wasn’t a clown when Hiram saw it, loping out of the abandoned house at 29 Neibolt Street, but it was wearing a clown’s costume all right: a silver suit with a decaying neck ruffle and a row of bright orange buttons. </p><p>It had happened about a week before school ended, on a Saturday that Fred had been at the doctor’s for his speech therapy and Hiram hadn’t had anyone to hang around with. The reason he was walking past the abandoned house on Neibolt Street at all was that he’d been down at the trainyards so long that he was almost late for dinner, and he wanted to get home as fast as possible so his mom wouldn’t find out he’d been hanging around there on his own. </p><p>Sure, it could be dangerous, but not in the way the dump was - and Hiram liked being down at the trainyards, watching the freights go by and imagining the places they were going. Sometimes if he was really lucky a car-carrier would go by on its way up north, and Hiram’s daydreams would turn to owning a really fine car of his own: a Cadillac or a Ferrari. Neibolt Street dead-ended at a flat square of cracked asphalt a little ways past the Church School, and there was a low cement wall there at the perfect distance to watch the trains. Hiram had been sitting there for over an hour when he’d remembered he was supposed to be on his way home. </p><p>Usually he biked down there, taking the long downhill stretch of Witcham Street past Fred Andrews’ house until it intersected Neibolt Street at Route Two, but that day he was on foot, and it took nearly twice as long to hike back up the hill and come in for dinner. He sped up instinctively when he got to the gate that bordered the Neibolt yard - if you could call it a yard, it was more like a haven for weeds, which were taking over the decaying grass at an alarming rate. </p><p>The house on Neibolt street had been empty for as long as Hiram had been alive. It was separated from the gravel road by a fence taller than Hiram’s head, and tendrils of long, thorny weed snuck through the iron bars of the fence and curled out along the cracked concrete. There were some real whoppers in there: thistles as big as his fist, with broken glass sparkling up from the patchy ground and the decaying porch being slowly eaten by monstrous, thorny plants that sprung up through the rotting wood. </p><p>The only people who went in the Neibolt house were homeless. Transients began to hang around the trainyards in early September, vagrants who rode the rails and stopped off in Riverdale to do some farm work before heading somewhere else. Mostly they left you alone if you were a kid playing down there, though sometimes they’d ask you if you had any money or cigarettes, to which Hiram always gasped a squeaky “no,” and wheezed on his inhaler until they walked away. </p><p>They weren’t dangerous, not really, not the way his mom thought they were, but there was an air of uncleanliness about them that made Hiram’s throat close up - men in tattered, stained clothes and unwashed hair, lips rotten with cold sores and knuckles packed with dirt, a smell of alcohol clinging to their clothes. Once a guy had waved at him, and when Hiram had realized he’d been missing three fingers on that hand, he’d had nightmares about it for weeks. He’d also once heard a deeply disturbing rumour that if you were a queer you could get a blowjob off any guy down at the trainyards for a quarter. </p><p>He was walking past the fence, taking long, quick strides, when the alarm on his watch went off. Responding to the alarm with an unconscious, trained urgency, but unwilling to stop in front of the crumbling house, Hiram fumbled in the front pocket of his fanny pack for his medication as he walked. Hiram took a cocktail of pills twice daily, and though he’d never forgotten a dose, the alarm was to ensure they were taken at the same time every morning and evening. “Time for your birth control?” FP always chirped when he heard it, and Hiram always slugged him at the highest point he could reach, which was usually FP’s neck. </p><p>He was fumbling the lid off of the first bottle - his fingers were oddly nerveless - when he dropped it, staring in dismay as the small white pills exploded across the dry ground. With a muttered <em> shit shit shit, </em> he dropped to his knees and started collecting them, scooping them into the hem of his shirt that he pulled out like an apron at his waist. Half of it was fear of his mother’s response, and half was a frantic discomfort at the mess of them, the way they looked spilled negligently in the dirt. </p><p>He picked every pill up between his thumb and forefinger and put them back in the bottle. He’d forgotten to zip shut the fanny pack, and as he bent forward to retrieve one of the capsules, his inhaler clattered out of his pouch and passed under the Neibolt Street fence. </p><p>Hiram froze and stared at the rectangle of white plastic in the disheveled grass. The simple answer was to reach his hand under the gap in the iron fence and try to grab it, but he found himself strangely unwilling to try. It was as though there was an invisible boundary along the rim of the Neibolt yard, and he was afraid to cross it. It was dangerous, sure - the glass was everywhere, and the thorny weeds by the fence looked awfully sharp - but mostly he just didn’t want to do it. </p><p>
  <em> Because what if I put my hand under the fence and something grabs it and rips my arm off, like that crazy guy did to Oscar.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> That’s stupid. It’s just an empty house.  </em>
</p><p>He wiggled his fingers through the space between the bottom of the fence and the ground, and stretched out his arm. Though it seemed impossible that it could have fallen that far under the fence, the inhaler lay just beyond the reach of his fingertips. Even if he stuck his arm through to the socket and strained, he couldn’t touch it. </p><p>Hiram drew his hand back. <em> Forget it, </em> he thought. <em> I can get another one. </em>It wasn’t worth going through that gate, that was sure. He sat back on his heels, sloppily re-capping the bottle of pills with shaking hands. Why hadn’t he brought his bike? He still had to walk all the way up Kansas street - </p><p>
  <em> Hiram…. </em>
</p><p>The voice came across the matted Neibolt yard, rattling out of the empty house and pressing against his eardrums like cloth. Hiram froze for a second time, still crouched by the fence. He looked up at the face of the house, the broken windows looking out over the trainyard like blinded eyes. The wind blew through the two windows on the first story and made a noise that sounded like a sigh. </p><p><em> It’s just the wind, </em> he thought. Squatting on the baked asphalt outside the broken gate, a pill bottle in each hand, Hiram shut his eyes briefly, relying on the logic of dreams to hide him from the house’s unseeing gaze. </p><p>
  <em> Come here.  </em>
</p><p>All of a sudden he was on his feet, calmly replacing the pill bottles in his fanny pack. Not knowing for sure why he was doing it, Hiram pulled on the iron gate. It swung easily, any remnants of a lock broken long ago, and the metal moved soundlessly, even encouragingly, as though it wanted him to know he’d made the right decision. </p><p>He froze for a moment with his hand on the gate, and then saw his inhaler lying on the grass. That was true, it would be stupid to leave it. He would quickly pick it up and go home. </p><p>He took two quick steps into the yard, and bent to retrieve the inhaler, wiping it clean on the bottom of his shirt. Shaking it vigorously, Hiram put it to his lips and pressed the button, inhaling the faint medicinal taste that opened his throat and released the knot in his chest. He put it back in his fanny pack and zipped it up, checking twice to make sure it couldn’t fall out again. </p><p><em> Time to go, </em> he thought, and yet, as in a dream, his legs weren’t moving. </p><p>He started to walk towards the house. </p><p>A juberous feeling rose up in him as the house seemed to glide nearer. He wasn’t sure why he’d gone past the gate in the first place. He was already late for dinner, and his mother was going to have a cow, maybe even call the police. </p><p>
  <em> You’ll like it here, Hiram. Some of your friends are here. </em>
</p><p>He wasn’t in control of himself, moving as though dragged by an unseen hand. <em> The porch, </em> he thought, eyes riveted to the sagging wooden structure, and though he couldn’t know it at the time, the impulse guiding him was the same as that which had driven Fred to take his brother’s album down from the closet shelf. <em> I just want to look under the porch.  </em></p><p>He felt hypnotized as he reached the latticework, half-convinced that he was looking for his inhaler again, that he’d have to crawl down under the porch to get it. He poked one finger through the holes of the lattice - it was cool under there, pleasantly so, but he thought abruptly of the tramp with the missing fingers and pulled his hand back. He stood at the edge of the porch for a long time, a clump of ragweed flattened under his shoes, as though waiting for something to happen. </p><p>A gaping hole had been torn in the lattice to his right, more than large enough for him to crawl through. Hiram was small for his age - that was the reason for the GrowMax Kids Vitamins he took daily, each capsule containing 1300 mg of calcium - and he could fit through easily enough just by crouching. </p><p>He ducked his head to look under the porch, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the dark. Oddly enough he was breathing just fine now, inhaling full and mellow breaths of summer air. There were more weeds under here, broken glass and dead flattened brown leaves - the soil was blown with bits of trash and a few unbroken liquor bottles that lolled about like little bodies. The porch was only about six feet wide, and he could see the mutilated windows at the far end that led to the cellar. It smelled strongly of booze and rot, and someone’s old shoe was lying on its side in a patch of dirt. </p><p>His pulse pumping so violently through his neck that he saw stars, Hiram dropped to his knees and crawled inside. </p><p>Light fell down upon him in tiny diamonds from the latticework, an effect not unlike the show their class had seen at the planetarium last winter. The shade flattened out as he crawled deeper inside, carefully avoiding the chunks of glass. Once the darkness had closed completely over his head, the stupidity of what he was doing hit him, and he stopped on all fours. There were probably all kinds of dangerous items down here, and oh God, there could be needles! Dirty needles! And he was crawling! </p><p>Hiram yanked up one palm and then the other, squinting in the thin light to check for needle marks. Panicked, he started to shuffle back towards the sunlight, and that was when the face of the leper suddenly burst into the broken window in front of him. </p><p>At first all Hiram could do was stare. His scream caught in his throat like a glut of hair lodged in a drain, his eyes bulging and his mouth gaping open. It was the two-fingered man he’d seen the month before, only this man was dead. Had to be dead, because it was impossible that a person could be so decayed and still alive. The nose had collapsed, and pus ran in a river from the bloody holes of its nostrils. There were no eyelashes on the one yellow eye, while the other socket was filled with something black and mushy, wiggling with maggots. The flesh on its face sagged like an old sail, ruined by festering growths and boils. Everywhere the skin seemed to ooze and flap, leaving a long tear in the cheek and forehead through which Hiram could see bone. Patches of discoloured skin stretched at its lips as the mouth yawned open to speak, the tendons visible through the cheek. </p><p>“Come here, Hiram,” it said in a croaking voice. “I’ll give you a blowjob. I’ll do it for a quarter.” </p><p>Hiram screamed. It was long and high and loud and lost completely under the roar of a passing train. A hand shot out of the pane of glass, reaching for the collar of Hiram’s shirt. The yellow skin was stiff and thick, the two remaining fingers curled like a claw and smeary with some kind of runny membrane. Hiram shot backwards and landed on his rear, a single, sobering thought taking on clarity in his mind: </p><p>
  <em> Those boils mean leprosy, that thing has leprosy and if it touches me I'll get it too!  </em>
</p><p>It was crawling out the window, the yellow fingers dragging through the rotted leaves. Its shoulder broke through the shattered glass at the edge of the frame, but the leper didn’t seem to notice the shards of glass embedded in its arm. It moved with terrifying speed, already halfway across the dirt under the porch towards him. It spoke again - at least Hiram heard it speak, although the mouth was so decayed with both lips missing that it seemed impossible that it could make sound: </p><p>“I’ll do it for a dime,” the leper wheezed. A stream of oily blood ran down its forehead, splotching red into its good eye. It smelled like alcohol and death, the stink of rot. A pulsing lesion in its cheek burst, spraying the ground with pus. </p><p>Hiram moved with a speed and precision of which he hadn’t thought himself capable. Bolting back towards the entrance of the porch, he shielded his face with the crook of one elbow and burst directly through a piece of rotted lattice. Rolling through a rosebush that raised bloody gouges on his skin, he scrambled to his feet and stood before the porch, all trembling four-foot-five of him in high-tops and a fanny pack, his hands curled into shaking fists. Then the hands burst through the hole inches from where his body had been, and he screamed. </p><p>The hands clawed wildly at the rosebush, shredding the thorns and splattering the ground with thick droplets of blood. Hiram backed up at a run, staring in eye-popping horror, terrified of the blood touching his skin. His throat had narrowed to the size of a pinprick, his lungs begging for air. </p><p>“It won’t do you any good to run,” the leper croaked, and shoved its head and shoulders through the hole. In the sunlight he could see clearly that it was wearing a silver clown suit, ruffled at the neck and sleeves. Growths and ulcers throbbed on the surface of its rotten skin, liquid pus streaming from the gaping hole in its forehead. Despite the dirt and decay, the suit had an intact row of bright orange buttons. As it climbed out of the rosebush, the bright green plant withered and turned black. </p><p>The leper’s blood-red tongue unrolled from its mouth, racing across the ground towards Hiram like a party blower. It was at least four feet long and ended in a fork, the surface blackened with boils. Hiram lept away from it, and the leper’s eye rolled madly back in its head. It was crouched on all fours like some bizarre crab. </p><p>“Come here, Hiram,” it called. “You’ll like it down here with us.” </p><p>Hiram raced for the street. The leper got to its feet and raced after him, as quick as an animal. It was making a growling sound as it gave chase. Hiram screamed, a scream as high and sharp as glass, but there was no one around to hear him. He pumped his legs and arms furiously, running faster than Coach Black had ever seen him run in gym class, faster than he’d ever run before in his life. </p><p><em> If it touches me I’ll rot too, </em> he thought frantically, his mind jibbering and incoherent. <em> I can’t let it touch me, I can’t let it touch me -  </em></p><p>The thought allowed him to break free through the gate and bolt down the road. He could hear it panting behind him, the wafting smell of garbage and rot, like roadkill left in the sun. He increased his speed and sprinted for all he was worth, sucking in great hitching breaths through his pin-tight throat as he sobbed. </p><p>There was the briefest caress on the back of his neck, as though a slip of fabric had been dragged across the skin (or a flap of putrid skin, or a red, forked tongue) and then it was gone. Hiram ran for several more blocks in silence, his breath jagged in his ears, but the stench of the leper and the animal growling had disappeared. When he threw a terrified look over his shoulder at the bottom of Witcham Street, the road yawned still and empty behind him. He looked from side to side, panicked, but nothing moved but the faint rustle of trees. </p><p>Still, he ran until he passed the Rite Aid, and then slowed to a jog, cutting across Main Street towards home. He checked himself thoroughly for infected cuts or broken skin, but the only serious damage seemed to be the marks from the rosebushes. It would occur to him much later that he had run at least a mile, longer and farther than what his mother had claimed was impossible for him in gym. But all he cared about just then was outpacing the leper, that he got home before he heard it again, the grating, whistling voice that had known to call him by name. </p><p>“You think they might have leprosy?” Hiram had asked the others a few days later, when the topic of the transients came up while he was playing cards with Fred in his garage. He hadn’t told anyone about his experience at the Neibolt house, but the name of the disease itself had taken on a lustrous horror in his mind, and he thought about it often. A chill ran down his spine, and he shivered, clutching the cards tighter in his hand. “You know, when you’re all rotting inside, and you’ve got, like, cold sores, and boils, and-” </p><p>“That’s not leprosy, dummy, they’ve got the Syph,” said FP without looking up. He was engrossed in a Superman comic with his feet hanging over the edge of the hammock. </p><p>“The hell is that?” Hiram was horrified by the thought of a disease he didn’t know. Fred piped up an answer, laying down a pair of aces on the wood they were using as a table. </p><p>“You g-get it f-f-fr-”</p><p>“Fr-fr-from f-f-f-fucking,” FP finished in his best imitation of Fred’s stutter, and Fred wound up and clouted him in the head. </p><p>Hiram was agog. “You get it from <em> fucking? </em>” </p><p>“Sure,” FP answered sagely. “You get it by fucking someone who has it. Your dick turns black and falls off, it’s the first to go. Then the rest of you starts rotting and going mushy, only you’re still alive, but you’re turning into, like, liquid applesauce,” </p><p>“H-h-hey I’m eating h-here,” Fred protested, who had a peanut-butter sandwich halfway to his mouth. </p><p>FP spread his hands helplessly. “Hey, man, this is science.” </p><p>Hiram shrank back against the wall, tuning their voices out as they started to bicker. He stared in horror at the entrance to the garage, and again the things he had seen came back to him, as he knew they would every night for as long as he lived: the grating voice that had whispered <em> I’ll do it for a dime </em>, the sagging mucusy skin stretched over the bone like taffy. </p><p>And the roses that had wilted, covered in blood. </p>
<hr/><p>He left nothing out. By the time he was done telling the story, the others had shifted imperceptibly closer to him, so that they formed a tight-knit circle. Mary was squeezing Hal’s pudgy hand. </p><p>“Shit,” said FP finally. Hiram stuck his inhaler in his mouth and breathed hard, his hand shaking so badly that the plastic clattered against his teeth. </p><p>“What do we do?” asked Hal. “What does it mean?” He looked at Fred, and on instinct everyone else turned to look at him too. Fred was sitting very still, his arms around his drawn-up knees, his lips pressed so thin they disappeared. </p><p>FP let out a high, nervous laugh that startled everyone. Mary jumped. “This is a joke, right? You guys are all playing a joke on me?” He elbowed Hiram, who only swayed slightly and didn’t move. FP’s voice got softer and less hopeful. He glanced worriedly at Fred. “Right?” </p><p>Fred shook his head, and FP’s smile disappeared. </p><p>“They’re bad dreams,” said Mary. There was an air of authority to her voice, but Hiram knew she was wishful thinking as much as FP was. “Bad dreams, that’s all.” </p><p>“Then how did we have the same dream?” Hal asked. He looked to Hiram for confirmation. “The clown suit with the orange buttons?” </p><p>Hiram started to wheeze, and frantically blasted on his inhaler. </p><p>“W-w-what i-if suh-something’s h-h-hunting down kuh-kids,” Fred said. His voice was very quiet, but they all stopped to listen. “N-N-Not a puh-puh-person l-like everyone t-thinks. Suh-suh-something else.” He looked at each of them in turn, and Hiram saw pain in his eyes. “T-t-the suh-suh-same t-thing th-that g-g-got Os-Oscar.” </p><p>There was a respectful silence in which they all contemplated his words. The only sound was the faint whisper of wind in the trees and Hiram’s ragged breathing, the upstream pool behind the dam still soundlessly growing larger. </p><p>“We all saw something different, right?” asked Hal. “We all saw something we’re scared of?” </p><p>“Not me,” FP couldn’t resist. “Or I would’ve seen Marty Mantle’s wang. You ever seen him take a leak? Ugliest schlong I ever saw.” </p><p>“W-w-what a-are you s-scared of, FP?” Fred asked. The bluntness of the question made a somber silence descend among the group. FP looked down at his lap, spots of pink flush creeping across his face, and then away at the water, the evasive tactics of a student called to present homework at the board. </p><p>“You know when they have the parade by the bandstand on the fourth of July?” FP gnawed at his lower lip, looking away from the group. He shoved his glasses higher up on his face. “I always hated it. They freak me out.” </p><p>“What does?” Hal asked. </p><p>FP looked solemnly back into his face. “Clowns.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. oscar's room</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <em>"He thought of George sleeping now under a comforter of earth in Mount Hope Cemetery. Rotting there. His hands not folded because you needed two hands to do the old folding routine, and George had been buried with only one." - Stephen King, It.  </em>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>The dam building came to an abrupt end around three-thirty. The pool of water behind the car door was by then as deep as a wading pool, and one of the Riverdale cops had been sent down into the Barrens to see if a fallen tree had waylaid the sewer system. It turned out that they had inadvertently backed up a couple of sinks at the edge of town, and the cop was not in a particularly chuckalicious mood when he found out what had actually happened, even though FP had taken great care to explain the humor in the situation. </p><p>So they’d torn it down. When they were done the cop had surveyed them all with his arms folded over his big stomach, squinting his eyes. Mary had stepped on FP’s foot to keep him from launching into one of his Voices, which he seemed dangerously close to doing. </p><p>“You shouldn’t be playing down here,” he said. “I won’t tell you you can’t because I know you won’t listen, but don’t you come down here alone, hear me? And always stick to the curfew. We’ve got a maniac on the loose, your parents’ told you that?” </p><p>They had all nodded yes, and Hal had blubbered a bit, which got them all off easy. Once they were done taking the dam apart, they’d walked somberly up to Kansas street in a group, where Mary and Hal had branched off for the library, since they both had books they wanted to find. Hiram had walked with Fred and FP a little ways down Jackson until they’d all heard his mother’s voice issuing over the houses from where she was hollering on her back porch: </p><p>“HIIIII-RAMMMM” </p><p>FP opened his mouth to mock the voice, but Fred elbowed him swiftly in the ribs. Hiram turned white as paper and took two steps backward. “See ya,” he said, and then bolted for home. </p><p>So it was just Fred and FP walking aimlessly towards Fred’s house, taking turns pushing Fred’s bike because Fred was too tired from taking the dam apart to ride them double. The sun shone brightly on both of their backs, reflecting off the bike’s battered silver frame. They didn’t talk, but it was not an altogether uncomfortable silence. It was the silence of two people who had been friends for a very long time, and for whom conversation was no longer necessary. </p><p>“Hold up a minute, Freddie,” FP suddenly spoke up. His saved allowance was burning a hole in his pocket, and they were nearing the corner of Jackson and Witcham, where a short concrete strip mall stood out from the surrounding houses. He nodded his head towards the shops. “Lemme get us an ice cream or something. What do you want?” </p><p>“N-Nothing,” said Fred, though he didn’t protest the detour. “I-I’ll w-wait.” </p><p>“Your loss, Señor,” said FP, and went up towards the parking lot. Fred waited while FP went into the Rite Aid for a popsicle. When FP came back out, Fred had dropped his bike on the ground and was sitting on the curb with his arms around his knees. FP followed his line of vision and saw with an unpleasant start that the sewer grate where Oscar had been found was visible from where they had stopped. </p><p>“What do you think about what Hiram said?” FP asked tentatively, sitting down next to him and unwrapping the Rocket Pop, which he offered to his friend without taking the first lick. Fred took it and licked it messily, wiping his mouth on his hand. There were dark shadows under his eyes that made him look much older than his age, and his face was pale and drawn. </p><p>For a crazy moment, FP almost told him something - something that had happened to him out by the Paul Bunyan statue at the city center the day Marty Mantle had chased him out of the arcade. But he held his tongue. That was just a dream, after all. And Fred was upset enough without making it worse, and he would make a whole lot of things worse if he told that story, that was for sure. </p><p>Fred’s eyes were glued to the grate at the bottom of Witcham Street. All last fall there had been bright orange construction sawhorses set up around there, leftover from the Riverdale Department of Water and Power doing some work at the base of the hill. Oscar would have had to duck under them to reach the sewer drain. “I t-t-think muh-maybe t-t-the o-other k-kids suh-saw it t-too. B-b-before th-they-”</p><p>FP nodded sagely. He’d had the same thought himself, that maybe Hiram and Hal had only escaped because they were some little bit luckier than Betty and Oscar had been. That maybe the last thing the Ripsom girl ever saw was some sicko in a clown costume with big orange buttons… only he didn’t like having thoughts like that, and he had slammed the lid on that one like he had the memory of the Paul Bunyan statue. </p><p>“O-O-Oscar s-saw it,” Fred said softly, but FP knew he was talking more to himself. His brown eyes were clouded with pain. “M-m-maybe.” </p><p>“Listen,” FP said, mainly to get Fred looking at his face again. He opened his mouth to say something reassuring, that maybe Oscar wasn’t connected to all of this bad stuff after all - but what came out was something different, and entirely unplanned. “I want to see the picture at your house.” </p><p>Fred’s eyes widened, and he handed the popsicle back to his friend. He shook his head violently, as he often did when his stutter prevented him from raising a more loquacious defense. They had been friends long enough that FP could read his face as easily as his mind. </p><p>“Why not? Then maybe we’ll know what we’re dealing with. And maybe it won’t move, and it was just an ordinary picture after all.” He nudged Fred’s leg with his knee, so his friend would know he wasn’t disbelieving him, just hoping they’d find something to make him feel better. He licked the runny side of the popsicle. “‘Cause look, someone could dress up in a clown suit and kill kids, right? And if they’re really scared, their imagination fills in the rest.” The thought made him shudder, the sweetness of the syrup souring in his mouth, but he pressed on. “But the picture... And the blood... It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for it to just be some sicko.” </p><p>“Ih-Ih-I t-t-hink ih-it’s h-h-his g-g-ghost,” Fred stuttered. </p><p>“Oscar’s ghost?” </p><p>Fred’s eyes were full of pain, but he was looking at FP with his full attention, his face hopeful and slightly luminous as it turned up to him, and FP found - an unbelievably rare occasion for him - that he was briefly lost for words. He racked his mind for something reassuring to say, his brow furrowing as he sucked on the popsicle. </p><p>“Well, why would Ozzie’s ghost want to scare you, Freddie?” </p><p>“H-H-He’s p-p-probably muh-muh-mad at m-me.” Tears filled Fred’s brown eyes. His tanned knees were knobby peaks below the hem of his denim shorts, and there was a dried-up scab across one where he’d fallen off his bike. “Suh-suh-since Ih-it w-w-was m-my f-f-fault he d-d-d-”</p><p>“It wasn’t your fault, Freddie.” </p><p>“B-b-but I guh-guh-gave h-him t-the buh-buh-BOAT!” Fred exploded, and FP jumped. “I di-didn’t w-want tuh-tuh-to p-play w-w-with h-him and I-I-It w-was m-my f-f-f-fault he we-we-went ou-ou-OUTSIDE!” </p><p>“Fred, come on.” FP hesitated. He wasn’t very good at making people feel better, apart from cracking jokes, of course, but he was good at talking and maybe that counted for something. “Let’s think about this rationally, for a sec. He asked you to make him the boat, didn’t he? So you were doing something nice for him. It’s not like you were even mad at him or something, were you? You didn’t know what was gonna happen. It’s not like you’re the one that killed him, for cripes sake. It’s not like you made him do something dangerous like you gave him a gun or a razor or something like that. You were being nice, that was all.”</p><p>Fred stared at FP, willing himself to believe it. He knew in some strange adult corner of his mind that FP was right, but to admit it to himself seemed to be unthinkable, a betrayal paramount to sending Oscar into that storm all over again. Why, then, if it wasn’t his fault, did his parents ignore him at home, treat him as coldly as if he were a monster? Why then, couldn’t he shake the guilt? It <em> was </em> his fault, he knew it. He <em> knew.  </em></p><p>Or else he had to accept that there were things out there that were beyond his control, that even the most attentive, generous older brother in the world could have his little brother stolen from him, and to accept that would be too much growing up for one day. To accept that would mean accepting that sometimes things were too fucked up to fix, and they just kept getting worse. It would mean accepting that his parents were doing something wrong in ignoring him, that he didn’t deserve their coolness at all, and Fred didn’t want to live with that knowledge. He had suspected these things for a long time, but he didn’t want them to be true. </p><p>These things were easy to forget when he biked - racing to the drugstore, thinking that Hiram’s life was in his hands, that the Cooper kid would get cold feet and leave, that Marty Mantle would come back and wreck them both the way he’d bashed up the dam - flying up the hill towards the pharmacy on the oversized bike he’d bought that spring, an act that was possibly a suicide attempt considering how long it had taken him to learn to control it; his stutter, the sight of his father in tears, his mother’s blank eyes and shaking hands. The rain lashing the windows, his last glimpse of Oscar going out into the storm, dressed in his yellow slicker and red stomping boots, the last time Fred would ever see him. It was gone when he got the bike up to speed, all gone, replaced with a purity of exertion that tore the guilt right out of his head. But it always came back. </p><p>He dropped his head into his hands, looking for all the world like a miniature adult, some forlorn businessman whose stock had just gone down fifty percent. “Ih-It’s m-my f-f-fault,” he stuttered, knowing at the same time with a dull sense of irony that FP was right. He had made the boat out of newsprint because Oscar had always loved to sail them, and he had given it to him because he wanted him to be happy. No, he hadn’t killed his brother, not on purpose, but something had. Something that maybe looked like a clown, something that could make pictures bleed and balloons float against the wind. </p><p>He had been sick that day, drowsing in bed with a fever, and still, he’d folded the boat for him, sealed it carefully with a brush and wax while his mother played <em> Fur Elise </em> on the piano downstairs. The rain had lashed the bedroom windows, enclosing the room in its own hazy warmth. Oscar had been trying to make his own boat, following the directions in his Boy’s Book of Activities, but it had been coming out wrong and Fred had helped. Oscar had given it a boy’s name, and Fred had corrected him gently, said that boats were called <em> She.  </em></p><p>And Oscar had hugged him goodbye, and Fred had felt for that briefest moment the same way he had watching Oscar commit that bit of trivia to memory, as seriously as if he would later be quizzed - that being a big brother was pretty alright, something special, even. He had loved him until the end, he knew that much. He’d loved Oscar</p><p>
  <em> (to death) </em>
</p><p>with all his heart. </p><p>Fred took a deep sucking breath, and turned to FP, whose popsicle was melting all over his arm. He wanted to tell him that FP was right, that this conversation had made him feel even better than the grief specialist his mother had sent him to in Bangor for one session, but all he did was open his mouth and burst into tears. </p><p>FP looked furtively around the street to make sure no one was there to mistake them for a couple of queers, and then put an arm around Fred’s shoulders and drew him in close to his chest. “Hey, you’re okay, Freddie. It’s okay.” </p><p>“I d-d-didn’t wuh-wuh-want him t-t-t-to g-get kuh-KILLED!” Fred sobbed. FP could feel his tears sheeting down his neck and dripping on the collar of his shirt. He put his popsicle down on the curb and held Fred with both hands. “I L-L-LOVED H-HIM I D-D-D-DIDN'T W--W-ANT H-HI-HIM T-TO- D-D-D-DIE-” </p><p>“Christ, Freddie, I know you didn’t.” FP held him tighter, patting him encouragingly on the shoulder like you would a fussing infant. “You loved the kid, I know you did. I know. It’s okay.” </p><p>Fred kept sobbing, sucking great gulps of air against FP’s neck, and FP carefully rested his chin on top of Fred’s head. His brown hair was warm from the sun. He was suddenly aware of how alive Fred was, the weight of his body against him, hot and solid and trembling, and he had to hold himself back from taking refuge in absurdity, jumping up and doing a Voice or a little skit. His mouth felt sticky and dry from the popsicle. Seeing Fred cry was something like seeing your dad cry, or your teacher at the grocery store in their pajamas, it was <em> wrong. </em> It made his heart feel like it was falling down into his stomach. </p><p>Finally Fred drew back and wiped his nose and face, radiating shame. FP looked politely away, allowing him a moment to pull himself together. </p><p>“S-S-Sorry,” Fred stuttered. He squeezed his hands together and shot FP an insincere glare. “I-I-If y-y-you t-tell a-anyone I c-c-cried, I s-swear-” </p><p>FP felt a rush of relief, which he covered quickly with magnanimity. “Hey, I don’t blame you. He was your brother, for fuck’s sake. If my brother got killed I’d cry my head off.” </p><p>“Yuh-you d-don’t have a b-brother,” Fred replied, calming down a little. He wiped his nose on his shirt collar. </p><p>“Yeah, but if I did.” FP crossed his heart fastidiously. </p><p>“Yuh-you w-would?” </p><p>“Sure would.” It seemed vaguely the right time to pull out one of his Voices, but FP managed to tamper down the urge. Fred’s eyes were red, but there was colour in his cheeks again - he looked more <em> there </em>than he had before. “And look, Oscar doesn't have any reason to scare you. So maybe it was related to that clown thing after all.” </p><p>“Muh-muh-maybe he d-d-doesn’t kn-kn-know t-that I l-l-l-loved h-h-him-” </p><p>FP dismissed the idea with a firm shake of his head. “He knows that, Freddie. And he knows it isn’t your fault, anyone can see that. Once you’re dead you know everything. He’s probably up there in heaven right now having some good chucks, okay? He’s probably real glad he got you as his brother.” </p><p>Fred’s face was splotchy and streaked with tears. He looked at FP with his trembling lips pressed tight together, and FP saw that there was a spark of hope in his eyes. </p><p>“O-o-okay,” Fred said finally. </p><p>“You believe me?” </p><p>“I m-meant o-okay we can g-go up to h-h-his r-room.” Fred took a deep shaky breath, and FP thought, not for the first time, that Fred was no fool. His brain didn’t stutter, that was for sure. And he was brave, braver than any of them. “T-there m-might be a c-clue about w-whos k-killing the kids. S-S-So w-we sh-should go.” </p><p>“Right,” said FP, and swallowed a lump in his throat. It seemed suddenly near to impossible that going up to Oscar’s room had been his suggestion. Because there was something fishy going on, it was certain about that. There was no part of him that believed Fred had been dreaming, or imagining things, and why should he? There was all kinds of really chuckalicious shit like that in the bible, after all, forget movies - if you wanted to see some really fucked up shit, all you had to do was look in the Old Testament. And if you took the scripture at face value - which everyone did, since it was that line in Leviticus or whatever that confirmed you were in for ten flavors of hell if you were a fag - it stood to reason that a little matter like a picture bleeding was well within the realm of reality. FP’s family went to church, and their pastor swore up and down that everything in the bible was real and actual fact. </p><p>So something fucked up would probably happen. That was a given. And suddenly FP didn’t want to know what that fucked up thing was going to be… But he didn’t want Fred to have to see it alone. </p><p>“Come on,” he said and threw the remains of his melted popsicle away into the grass. He licked his hand, the sugary-tart taste like summer and childhood and the Fourth of July all in one. Once he was on his feet he helped Fred get his bike up, the hot metal leaving pink blisters on his grubby hands. FP had a bike of his own at home, a kid’s black Raleigh from Freese’s, but it looked like a baby trike next to Fred’s. Fred gave him a shaky, tentative smile. </p><p>“G-g-get on, mushmouth,” he said and swung a leg over the seat. His feet could only reach the ground on tip-toe on either side, but he held the bike steady while FP positioned himself over the package carrier. As always, FP expected them to tip over and hit the curb when Fred pushed off. The massive hunk of metal lunged crazily to one side while Fred’s feet pressed achingly slowly down on the pedals, completing barely a single rotation as he strained to get it moving. Cords stood out in his neck. The playing cards clothespinned to the wheels popped and bent against the spokes, and the bike lurched side-to-side in a seemingly irreparable wobble, forcing FP to grab Fred tightly around the waist. But then the tires were spinning, faster and faster, and the strip mall began to blur behind them, and as Fred stood up on his pedals, gathering speed, and then they were flying. </p><p>They raced to beat the devil all the way home. </p><hr/><p>They stashed Fred’s bike in the side yard and entered the Andrews house by the back door. There was a time in FP’s memory when this house had felt to him like a home too good to be real, like an old TV sitcom with a big yellow dog running around and a dad who came home and hung up his hat at five-thirty. </p><p>The Andrews kitchen was painted bright yellow, and once upon a time, Fred’s mom used to be in there all the time baking cookies, which she’d set down on a big old plate in front of them while they watched TV in the den. The fridge was always full to the rafters and they bought the good ice cream in the summer months, boxes and boxes of Popsicles and ice cream sandwiches. Fred and Ozzie had just about every toy you could want piled out in the garage: not that they were rich or anything, they just knew how to have fun with the junk they had. FP remembered the one time they’d built a ramp for their bikes out of wood planks and taken turns shooting at each other with a water pistol while they jumped. </p><p>It was baby fun, sure, but it was fun all the same. They even let Oscar hang around if he didn’t bother them too much. Oscar was a weird little kid: he was completely fearless. The one time they’d taken him up to the cliff over the quarry to watch them jump, Oscar had flung himself off without a second’s hesitation. FP had been scared half to death of the jump, but Oscar had already done it, and you couldn’t exactly sit around and let your friend’s kid brother show you up, so he’d had to do it too. They’d spent all afternoon splashing around in the water, and it had turned out all right.</p><p>All that, of course, was before. FP used the phone next to the fridge to call his mother, letting her know he was at Fred’s house and would be home in time for dinner. The fruit bowl on the counter had a moldering apple in it, wrinkled up and holey, like picture books where there’d be a worm poking out. The rest of the kitchen wasn’t dirty, not quite, but it seemed dusty and abandoned, like a movie set with no actors. Fred crept quietly through the kitchen to the stairs while FP was on the phone. </p><p>“Fred?” It was Mrs. Andrews’ voice, floating out from the vague direction of their sitting room. They had a sleek old grand piano in the front window, and Fred had been forced, kicking and screaming, to take lessons until he was seven. Oscar was supposed to start too, though of course now he never would. “Is that you?” </p><p>Fred shot a glance at FP as though they were two bank robbers who’d been captured at gunpoint. “I-It’s m-me, Mom. And FP.” </p><p>“Hi, Mrs. Andrews,” FP called. If he’d been over at Hiram’s house he would have said something smart, but this was different. Fred’s mom just made him sad. Her voice was different ever since Oscar died, floating oddly like a person lost in space. </p><p>“Are you staying for dinner, FP?”</p><p>“N-N-No, he’s g-going h-home t-to eat,” Fred called. He jerked his head at FP, indicating the staircase. </p><p>“Thanks anyway, Mrs. A,” FP called politely, but there was no reply. </p><p>They stole up the stairs and went into the corner bedroom, which was Fred’s. FP had been in there so many times that he knew it like the back of his hand. It wasn’t nearly as tidy as Hiram’s room, but a far cry above FP’s, meaning the baseball cards and comic books tossed all over the place were arranged in some rough kind of order. Fred went straight to the milk crate full of records next to his bed, and began to rifle through them. There were a couple of other albums thrown across the bedspread, and a scuffed baseball bat leaned up against the footboard. </p><p>“Jaysus, look at this,” said FP, picking up Born In The USA. “Your mom know you’re collecting pictures of this guy’s can?” </p><p>“S-shut up, FP,” said Fred, but a smile twitched at the corner of his somber mouth. “He’s g-good.” </p><p>“Your lips to the boss man’s Levi’s, Andrews.” FP gave the album a loud, salacious kiss, and Fred snatched it out of his hands. FP started to swing his arms and hips, mumbling into an invisible microphone as though he had a mouthful of rocks: </p><p>
  <em> “Hey little girl, is your daddy home, did he go and leave you all alone,”  </em>
</p><p>Fred smiled, not because it was good - FP’s Springsteen sounded pretty much like his Jim Morrison, which was indistinguishable from his Elvis - but because it made his heart a little lighter. Fred removed the record from the sleeve and placed it on the turntable, turning the volume up loud. </p><p>“She’ll t-think we’re in m-my r-room,” he explained. “C-come on.” </p><p>Moving like ghosts, they slipped across the hall and into Oscar’s room. Oscar’s room was smaller than Fred’s, and the door had been firmly shut. There was a faint smell when they stepped in - a smell like old paper and dust. FP’s eyes wandered instinctively to the window, but it was sealed tight. The room was soundless, airless, dry as a desert. FP felt the hairs stand up along the back of his spine. </p><p>Sun fell from a crack in the curtains onto the dusty carpet. The line of stuffed animals looked out at him with their blank, unseeing button eyes. His eye was drawn to the wallpaper, where a dried brown splatter of something made a smiling crescent gash through the border of stars and moons. Below it, on the floor, the red album lay closed. He faintly remembered Fred saying it had landed open, but he pushed the thought away. Fred had got it wrong. Big deal. </p><p>FP crossed the room and stood near the window. Here and there, the carpet was splotched with something brown that looked like chocolate milk. FP supposed it <em> could </em>even have been chocolate milk - Oscar used to be a fiend for the stuff. They would sit in a row, him and Fred and Oscar at the Andrews' kitchen counter, and suck it down like water after school. It wasn’t impossible that the kid had spilled some on his carpet a long time ago and hadn’t wanted to tell his parents. But he knew in the same way he knew Fred hadn’t been wrong about the album laying open that that wasn’t the case. </p><p>FP knelt and picked up the album between his thumb and forefinger. He didn’t think he’d have the guts to do it, only he didn’t want Fred to have to be the one to touch it again. It was heavy, and the textured cover was cool despite lying in the shaft of sunlight. He put it carefully on Oscar’s bed and flattened down the curling tape on the cover. </p><p>PROPERTY OF OSCAR ANDREWS AGE 6. </p><p><em> Age six, </em> he thought, <em> cripes almighty, </em> and the reality of death hit him like a freight train. Death wasn’t like the pictures of heaven in the Children’s Bible, and it wasn’t like when you fell down clutching your throat and rolling playing King of the Hill. Death was real and irreversible, and it could happen to anyone, to kids in your class or your little brother, to Fred, even to him. He thought of that kid who had been hit by a train picking blueberries off in Castle Rock, and he felt goosebumps prickle up and down his spine. </p><p>FP opened the album and began to turn the pages, flipping past photos of trains and houses and fairs, past a photo of Fred as a toddler in his mother’s arms and Oscar and Fred in front of their father’s old Ford. As he got near the end of the book the pages got harder to turn, and he saw some of them were crusted together with a dried brown substance that looked like snot. It crumbled onto the bedspread as he moved each picture. It could be blood, all right - but there wasn’t enough of it to match up with the story Fred had told, and it could be something else too. Something like - only here he drew a blank. It was too thick to be chocolate milk, and the glueiness was more like syrup. </p><p>Was a kid who took such care of this album going to spill a holy load of chocolate syrup all over it? Sure, little kids were stupid, but FP didn’t think so. And it didn’t smell like chocolate, anyway. </p><p>He got to the last page and flipped back a few, studying the pictures closely. </p><p>“Freddie?”</p><p>“Yeah?” </p><p>“There’s no school photo in here.” </p><p>Fred came to his side, his warm breath raising the little hairs on the side of FP’s neck. FP could feel his own pulse pounding in his ears. </p><p>“It w-w-was there,” said Fred, and then FP saw it - the torn corner of a photo still embedded in one of the studio corners. It was about a quarter-inch triangle, a white border and a bit of blue backdrop, the kind they always sat you in front of on picture day. The back of the scrap was stained brown. That was all. </p><p>Fred swallowed, his throat working hard. He sat on the bedspread next to FP and pressed their knees together, re-settling the album so that it was across both of their laps. </p><p>As though violently caught in an invisible wind, the pages suddenly flipped hard against one another, ruffling seamlessly despite the brown substance that had glued them together. When the flipping stopped with a purposeful jolt, the album was open to a single sepia postcard with a white border. Tiny lettering across the top dated it as 1935. Fred leaned closer to the photograph, so close he was almost touching it. “FP?” he asked. </p><p>“Yeah?” </p><p>“T-That’s us.” </p><p>FP looked at the photo without understanding. It showed a very ordinary street scene on a road he recognized as Main Street, on a day that must have been the Fourth of July because there were pinwheels everywhere and great big rosettes tied on the light posts. He recognized the center of town, cars frozen in mid-roll, pedestrians spread out on the sidewalk for the parade. A great big Oldsmobile was the focal point of the shot, and in the far distance you could see the bandstands at Bassey Park, the entertainers reduced to tiny pinpricks on stage. Bunches of balloons, as small as spider eggs in the background, drifted against the sky. </p><p>“What do you mean?” FP asked, and then he saw it. On the sidewalk that ran along Main Street, the photographer had captured two young boys, both dressed in corny tweed suits and caps. They were walking towards the concrete rim of the canal, and their faces were clearly visible. The taller boy was Fred Andrews, beyond a doubt, his chin tilted up to see under the cap and his sepia-toned lips frozen in a half-smile. And next to him, wearing a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles, was FP himself. </p><p>This was fifty years ago, and yet the faces in the photograph were identical to the two boys who huddled over the album, their temples pressed lightly together. If FP had had the guts to explain it away, he might have told himself it was a family album, that this postcard had been saved because it showed some ancient relatives of theirs in their boyhood days, but he knew better. The same way he knew the brown stuff wasn’t chocolate syrup at all. </p><p>“D-D-Do you s-s-see i-it?” Fred asked, and that was when the picture began to move. </p><p>The tiny balloons tied to the bandstand began to bobble in the air. The Olds in the middle of the intersection suddenly rolled forward through the frame, turning lazily onto Canal street and vanishing from sight. A second car, identifiable only as a scrap of a front bumper at the side edge of the photo, crossed the intersection in its place. The tiny blots of entertainers on the bandstand began to juggle, pedestrians now shuffling along the sidewalk against the traffic. The 1935 Fred and FP laughed and linked arms, strolling towards the footbridge over the canal. Pinwheels turned in an invisible breeze. A mother pushed a stroller along the sidewalk in the foreground, the bonneted baby within squalling and waving a rattle in the air. </p><p>He could still hear Fred’s record player from the other room, but it was almost as though there were sounds coming from the photo as well - revving motors and the faintest of celebratory music from the park and the baby’s tiny wail, all with the same essential quality of being muffled behind walls. It was as though the postcard had become a tiny video screen. FP leaned closer to hear it, watching as the Fred and FP in the photo crossed the street towards the celebration in the park. </p><p>FP tore his eyes from the stranger with his face and stared at the figures on the bandstand. One of them had climbed down and was coming closer - running, he realized, running fast - with the spasmodic jerking motions of something that was not quite human. The blurry shadow of it grew larger and yet somehow less formed - it was only a brown smear on the postcard’s surface, but he could swear he could make out an arm, and then a hand - a ruffled glove and a row of buttons that were brownish-beige in the photo but he thought certainly could have been orange. He opened his mouth to warn Fred when it suddenly vanished below the rim of the canal: it was gone for a brief, relieving second, and then suddenly the figure popped up into frame in the path of the two boys, the smeary features coalesced into a single nightmare image. </p><p>It was a clown: a clown with Oscar Andrews’ face. The eyes were two gaping black holes, and it grinned a toothless, bleeding grin. There was a bright silver ruffle around its neck - FP realized with a start that he could finally make out colours - and the tufts of bedraggled hair at its ears were bright orange. It had only one arm - the other was a bloody stump. Its eyes rolled crazily. The two boys in the photo saw it too: they opened their mouths in soundless screams. </p><p>“NO!” yelled Fred in FP’s ear, and reached for the picture. Instead of touching the surface of the postcard, his fingertips slid easily into the book, not just into the page but into the world of the photo, his skin taking on the faded sepia tone of the image. The place where his fingers vanished into the postcard was rippled slightly, like the surface of a pond. As if refracted through water, the fingertips seemed to jump away from the rest of his hand, disconnected. The Oscar-clown opened its mouth as if its jaw was hinged, showing lamprey rings of teeth. </p><p>“NO, FRED!” FP yelped, and yanked his hand back. Huge gashes had appeared in Fred’s fingers in the place where they had touched the photo, surgically clean, as though sliced by a blade. As his hand withdrew from the page great splatters of blood began to fall, pattering onto the surface of the postcard like heavy rain. The image had gone sepia-toned again, the clown’s gaping mouth now stretched in a grin, and the blood was a bright cherry red where it landed. </p><p>FP dove to his feet and the album plummeted off their laps to slam shut on the carpet. Fred shoved his hand in his mouth and looked at FP in horror. Bright tears of pain had come into his eyes, and a dribble of blood sheeted down the length of his wrist. </p><p>“Let me see,” FP gasped, his heart still pounding in his throat, and took Fred’s wrist tenderly in his hand. He held Fred’s hand in his and examined the wounds, which slashed brutally deep into the soft pink skin of his middle, ring, and pointer fingers. The tip of the pointer finger was flapping slightly, as though it had been nearly severed. </p><p>FP swallowed down a gag and sprinted for the bathroom, dragging Fred behind him by the wrist. He knew there were band-aids in the Andrews’ medicine cabinet: he’d used them often enough when he came to play here, after tumbling out of the tree in the backyard or nicking himself when they were messing around in Artie’s workshop in the garage. He pulled down a box of Snoopy bandaids and wiped Fred’s fingers clean, running his hand under cold water until the bleeding stopped and trussing him up with a tight wrap of bandages. He shoved his glasses up his nose several times as he worked, his fingers shaking. He understood that if he hadn’t pulled Fred’s wrist back in time, the fingers would have been amputated. And if Fred got more than his hand in - </p><p>Fred let out a long, shuddery breath when he was finished, his eyes never leaving FP’s face. He looked petrified, but there was something shrewd and purposeful in his expression, as though something of great significance had clicked into place behind his eyes. </p><p>“You s-saw it. It w-was- it w-was-” </p><p>FP sucked in a deep breath, and Fred took that opportunity to leap off the bathroom counter and sprint back to Oscar’s room, letting the bathroom door slam behind him. FP raced after him, panicked. </p><p>“Jesus Christ, Freddie, no!” he yelled when he saw Fred on his hands and knees, rifling through the album. He grabbed it and tried to pull it out of his hands. “You almost lost your fucking<em> fingers-! </em>” </p><p>Fred wrenched the album back and got it open to the same page. FP threw a glance at the picture despite himself. Everything was the same: the car, the woman with the baby carriage, all of it fixed in place and unmoving. Only the boys and the clown were gone. Fred knelt with his bandaged fingers pressed unconsciously to his mouth, staring down at the motionless scene of the parade. </p><p>“Come on,” said FP, and pulled Fred to his feet. He closed the album as quickly as he could, touching the cover only by the very outside edge, and gave Fred a shove back towards his own room. Before they left, he picked up Oscar’s heavy wooden toy-box and set it down on top of the photograph album. It seemed suddenly possible that the clown could <em> lift </em>the cover, could try and climb out. He stacked a few more toys on top of it and nodded towards the door. “Let’s go.” </p><p>They scrambled back into Fred’s room, where the record was still rotating. Fred pulled the needle up, wincing at the pressure on his bandaged fingers, just as they heard the light footfalls of his mother on the stairs. </p><p>“What’s going on up there?” Mrs. Andrews called. There was a faint suggestion of exasperation in her tone, but it felt cursory, only a weak pretense of discipline.“I could hear you two yelling and screaming and running from downstairs. Were you two wrestling?” </p><p>“Y-Yes, m-m-mom,” Fred admitted, raising his voice to carry down the hall. FP waited for her to come further up the stairs and into the light, but she didn’t. Just stood on the landing a few feet below them, visible only as a shadow. </p><p>“Well cut it out. It’s almost time for FP to go home.”</p><p>They heard her walk back down the stairs. Fred threw FP a helpless look. </p><p>“Yuh-yuh-you w-were right,” he said as they sank down soberly onto Fred’s bedcovers. FP realized he was still holding Fred’s hand, and let go. “The c-c-clown was p-p-pretending to be Oz-Ozzie.” He winced and flapped his bandaged hand in the air. “H-H-Hurts,” he said when FP looked alarmed. </p><p>“Well why’d you have to go and stick your finger in it, you fucking wet end,” FP answered, but he was more scared than he was annoyed. He kept seeing the way Fred’s fingers had turned to sepia when they’d broken through that photo, and the trance-like look that had come over his best friend’s eyes, like Fred was willing to keep on shoving his hand in. </p><p>“It was p-p-pretending t-to b-be Oscar,” Fred repeated, and FP realized it wasn’t just a statement of fact but also an explanation. “A-A-And the mummy. A-And-” </p><p>“That old moldy guy that Hiram saw,” FP answered for him. </p><p>“R-R-Right. L-L-Leper.” </p><p>“Jesus shit,” said FP, and looked down at Fred’s hands. He thought of making a joke, had one half-formulated about how this would affect his plans to play Street Fighter all summer in the arcade, and then decided Fred probably wouldn’t laugh. In fact, for the first time in his life, FP wasn’t really much in the mood for jokes either. </p><p>“What do we do?” he asked instead, and wasn’t even sure he was about to say it until it came out his mouth. It was a reflex as natural as breathing, because it was to Fred that he always inevitably addressed that question. Fred always knew what had to be done. </p><p>This was apparently no exception. “We s-s-stop it,” said Fred, and FP saw a grim determination in his eyes that he had never seen there before. “We k-kill the c-clown.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. cleaning up</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <em>
      <span>'I hated my dad', she said, and began to sob helplessly. 'I hated him. I was scared of him, I hated him. I could never be a good enough girl to suit him and I hated him, I did, but I loved him, too.' - Stephen King, It. </span>
    </em>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>
  <span>That summer Alice Smith received a postcard in the mail with a sweet little poem written on it, which she promptly stuck between her waistband and shirt, under her clothes. She was standing in the bathroom with the door shut tight against her father, reading it one last time before bed, when she first heard the voice out of the drain. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>We all float,</span>
  </em>
  <span> said the voice. </span>
  <em>
    <span>We all float down here. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Alice started and looked up, meeting the broken eyes of her reflection - broken because the mirror had a large crack down the middle, courtesy of Roger Smith, her father, and her image was sliced into two overlapping pieces. She noticed the bruise coloring the edge of one eye, curving up into her hairline, and frowned. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Down here, Alice. </span>
  </em>
  <span>It was a little girl’s voice, raspy and soft. Alice’s gaze refocused on the drain in the sink in front of her. The bathroom of the Smiths’ apartment was done in the same outdated style as all the others crammed on Lower Main - the porcelain sink was a chipped, powder-compact pink that managed to look like a festering sore. An unnerving wallpaper banner ran around the room - frogs on lilypads with dead, crinkly eyes. </span>
  <em>
    <span>We need your help. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Alice licked her dry lips and stared into the sink. The drain was about two inches in diameter, a plain chrome circle through which there was only a black hole of nothingness. The Smiths lived in the back, bottom-floor apartment and she supposed it was possible that some little kid in the building had figured out which pipes led where and was speaking through them as a prank. How they knew they were speaking to </span>
  <em>
    <span>her, </span>
  </em>
  <span>she wasn’t sure. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Help us, Alice. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“How do you know my name?” she asked the drain. She bent a little closer to the sink, and her blonde hair, loose and long, swung over one shoulder. It puddled in the bottom of the sink, and she raked it impatiently away from the hole in the drain. “Hello?” </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>We float down here, Alice. You could float too. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>A burst of impatience overtook her, and she had a rather childish thought about turning on the cold water and flushing the voice away. Alice had to finish washing up and get to bed in time to tuck the postcard somewhere her dad wouldn’t find it: under her mattress maybe, way at the back. A secret thrill of happiness raced down her spine at the thought of the poem, replaced just as quickly with a fear of what her father’s reaction would be if he knew. Roger Smith was not shy in voicing his feelings about the type of girls that ran around with boys, or the type of boys that would want anything to do with her. It would be lucky for this particular boy that he hadn’t signed the card if her father ever found it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>No one had signed the poem… but there was only one boy who was regularly nice to her at school, and that was Fred Andrews. He was in the other fifth-grade class, and once when she was on her way back from the water fountain near the girls’ bathroom, he had held the heavy metal door open for her at the end of the hall. Another time he had told her a joke when they were walking to an assembly in the gym, and smiled even when she didn’t laugh. Most boys who spoke to Alice wanted to know if the things other people wrote about her on the bathroom walls were true, but she had sensed no ulterior motive in Fred’s straightforward kindness. He had wanted nothing from her, she had known that very plainly. Rather he had been </span>
  <em>
    <span>giving</span>
  </em>
  <span> her something, some imperceptible gift of himself. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Most of the girls thought he was cute, even Hermione Reyes, who usually hung around with sixth or seventh-grade boys. Alice had heard her talking about it in class. She was unsure if she thought he was cute herself - she didn’t giggle or fix her hair in his presence, didn’t draw his initials in her books, or imagine them being married. Instead she felt a warmth when he was near her, a pull like a magnet was in the center of her chest. She would have followed him off the ends of the earth. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Something moved in the center of the drain, and she was jolted back to the bathroom. A strange smell began to rise from the pipes as she watched them, a smell like damp evening air, speckled with salt - a smell like the sea. Alice had never been to the sea, but she knew instinctively what it would smell like. Beyond the sea-smell there was another scent, a more human tang - something like copper, meaty and raw. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alice pulled her hair back and twisted it over her shoulder. It suddenly seemed a necessarily prudent thing to do. She bent back over the basin but kept her distance this time, hinging forward at the waist and holding the rope of hair against her chest. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Who are you?” she called into the pipes. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Betty Ripsom,” the voice replied, high and ghoulishly cheerful. “I’m Betty Ripsom, and the clown took me down here in the pipes and I died, and pretty soon he’ll come to take you, Alice, and Hal Cooper, and Fred Andrews, and FP Jones and Hiram Lodge-” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alice backed away from the sink. A cold finger ran down her spine, stiffening the muscles there until her back felt tight as a spring. As she stared into the basin with horror the voice sped up, taking on a croaking, manic quality so that she could no longer tell if it was a girl’s or a boy’s, young or old, and suddenly it overlapped itself into a chorus of voices, some of which, horribly, she recognized, all of them taking on a peculiar sing-song, like a nursery rhyme: </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“You’ll float down here with your friends, Alice, we all float down here, Oscar floats down here, don’t you Oscar, Alice, tell Fred that Oscar misses him, Oscar misses him but he’ll see him soon, very soon, tell him Oscar will be in the closet tonight, and tell FP that we know his secret, his dirty, dirty secret, tell him, Alice, we know the dirty secret he’s trying to keep-” </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>The voice broke into a stream of high pitched giggles that echoed crazily in the porcelain basin. Alice caught herself leaning over the sink again and stepped back, not a moment too late. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>A bubble of crimson blood was rising out of the bathroom drain, growing larger and larger until it burst like a balloon, spraying the porcelain sides of the basin with dark, thick red. Alice shrieked. The sink was suddenly full of blood, blood that was as thick as tar, with stringy dark clots and clumps that looked like hair. It was unmistakably blood - the copper smell was thick and rancid, a smell she understood innately without a reference, though, like the sea, she had never seen so much blood in one place. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She had only a moment to stare crazily into the sink full of blood before the drain backed up - she saw whatever was in it moving, rising - and a hurricane of blood suddenly gushed up out of the pipes and sprayed across the room, striking her across the face. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alice screamed. The torrent of blood burst crazily out of the pipe and flew up into the ceiling, splattering the frog-and-lilypad wallpaper with vibrant streaks of gore. It shot into her face and throat, waves upon waves of blood like a fountain that drenched her from head to foot. The thickest blood clogged the mouth of the drain until the sink overflowed with it, sending sheets of blood spilling over the rim to patter on the floor. Gobs of blood sizzled and burned on the bare, overhead light, droplets spraying her arms and landing as far as the bathtub floor. The front of her sweater was drenched, the fabric clinging horribly to her throat and arms. It was in her mouth and she gagged and spat to get it out, leaping back into the wall so that her head slammed into the towel bar and she screamed again, ricocheting crazily into the back of the door and then flattening herself against the light switch, where the least of the blood had spread. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was a pounding of feet out in the hallway, and then the door flew open, slamming against the froggy wallpaper so hard it left a mark. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“WHAT IN THE SAM HILL IS WRONG WITH YOU?” Her father thundered, and Alice’s legs almost sagged with relief. She had never been so glad to see her father in her life. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Daddy, Daddy,” she wept, rushing to his side and pointing to the drain, choking on the blood in her mouth. “It was there, it came from there!” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her father glared at the sink and then at her, giving her a shove back into the bathroom that made her feet slide in the blood, carrying her a few paces away from the door. “Well?” He folded his arms and stared her down, his face leathered and furious looking. There was disgust in his expression, but not directed toward the blood. All of his disgust was centered like a magnet on his daughter. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alice blinked at him and then at the blood smeared out crazily over the floor. Droplets of blood ran down her wrists and dripped off her hands. It was insane, it was laughable, but he was acting as though he couldn’t see-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ally, I’m waiting.” He was still wearing his janitor’s uniform, the big gray shirt and stiff pants, but he had removed his shoes as he always did after work and was in only the stained socks that her mother had bought out of a ten-pack at Freese’s Department Store and that the Smiths had never had money to replace. There was blood on his socks, couldn’t he see it? It had turned them the bright swampy red of a barn. “What in the blue blazes was all that screaming about? You know I don’t like to be interrupted when I watch my show.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“D-D-Don’t you see?” she stuttered, sounding uncannily like Fred Andrews and not realizing it. The blood was still thickly coating her front, she could feel it clinging to her belly and chest and the skirt at her hips. The smell of it was raw in her nose and throat, and it made her gag. “D-Don’t-” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her father scowled. “Speak up, girl.” He stepped into the bathroom and shut the door behind him, smearing blood off the doorknob with the palm of his hand. He didn’t flinch or react. “I’m going to give you ten seconds to tell me what all of this is about.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was blood on the mirror, spread thin so that she could see their reflections through it - another father and another girl in a tiny, red world beyond this one. Blood was cooking on the naked lightbulb, sizzling and releasing the thick smell of slaughtered cattle. Blood oozed marshily between her bare toes and ran in long streaks down the walls. She didn’t look at the drain. She was afraid to. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her father glanced in the red mirror and wiped a dried bit of shaving foam off his cheek. Alice realized the truth with the sobering confidence of childhood: There was blood everywhere, and her father couldn’t see it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“There…” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her father stepped forward menacingly, towering over her small frame. His socks squished in the blood on the floor. There was blood on him just from being in there - she could see a slash of it at his hip, where he’d bumped against the sink. A few red droplets clung to his elbow. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I worry about you,” he said, tilting her chin up. “I worry about you, Ally. I worry about what’s ever going to become of you.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>His hand suddenly lashed out and struck her cheek. She gasped, but she was more focused on the blood on his hand when he withdrew it than the pain. His whole palm was wet with streaks of blood from her face. When he hung it down by his side again, it left a red thumbprint on his work pants. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I worry a lot,” he said, and hit her hard above the elbow. She gasped again and jumped away, her arm stinging with pain. Tomorrow she would have a bruise, and the skin there would be badly swollen, the size and color of a ripe plum. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’ve got to grow up, Ally,” he said, and his voice was gentle now that the punishment had been dealt. “You’ve got to grow up, because I won’t always be there to take care of you.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alice nodded. There were tears of pain starting up in her eyes, but she didn’t let herself cry. If she cried Roger would get really angry, and that would be bad. Then he would really have to take care of her, and that would probably involve using his belt. She didn’t think she could handle that, not on top of the blood. That would be too much to bear. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Outside the bathroom door, the TV had started up again. Roger glanced regretfully over his shoulder, and shifted on the blood-slick floor. Blood sank into his socks with a </span>
  <em>
    <span>squelch. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Now tell me what all the screaming was about.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alice threw a terrified glance at the sink. The festering pink color of the porcelain had disappeared entirely under the red. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“There was a spider,” she invented. “A big, ugly spider in the drain. It scared me.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh.” This explanation seemed weak to her, but it seemed to please her father, and his mouth curved into what was almost a thin-lipped little smile. “Why didn’t you say so, Ally, you know I wouldn’t have hit you for that. All girls are scared of spiders.” He leaned over the drain, and Alice thought, so maliciously she surprised herself:</span>
  <em>
    <span> I hope it gets him. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Roger cocked his head and peered down into the plughole, his thick hands tightening on the bloody rim of the porcelain. He straightened up again, idly scratching the back of one hand. Alice watched as though hypnotized as he smeared blood across his skin. “Nothing down there now, Ally. Must’ve crawled back in.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He swatted her lightly on her rear, not a punishment-swat (God knew she’d had enough of those) but a gentle one, one a better father would give his child in jest. He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You get on to bed and don’t worry about it anymore.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was love in his voice, and she hated that she longed for it, straightening up to him like a flower stretching to the sun. </span>
  <em>
    <span>I never hit when you don’t deserve it, Ally,</span>
  </em>
  <span> he told her often, and her longing for her father’s love was such that she had to admit she did deserve it, wanted to deserve it, just so he could love her in spite of it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Because he </span>
  <em>
    <span>was</span>
  </em>
  <span> capable of loving her - there were days when the two of them spent hours together, days like the one where he had taught her to ride a bike or taken her to the train museum, and on days when he was kind to her like that she felt happy enough to cry. She wanted her father to love her, she wanted to be his special girl, even though more and more now there were times when he put his arm around her and she felt repulsed for a moment, the same way she had when the blood had gouted out of the drain. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I- I’m going to take a shower,” she said. The blood was drying on her skin, and she wasn’t sure if she could get it all off, but she wanted to try. She </span>
  <em>
    <span>had</span>
  </em>
  <span> to try. Even if he couldn’t see it, even if it was all in her mind, she could </span>
  <em>
    <span>feel</span>
  </em>
  <span> it. It was thick and warm on her front, clotted between her fingers and toes. She could feel it running down the backs of her knees. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“All right,” he said, and looked at her oddly, stopping with one hand on the doorframe (this leaving a huge swipe of blood on it) on his way out the door. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You worry me, Ally,” he said again, somberly. “You worry me an awful lot.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He went out, closing the door behind him. A moment later she heard the sound of the volume being turned up on the TV. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was blood in the tub, but not as much: the shower curtain had taken the brunt of it, and by wiping the bottom with towels (those that had been stashed under the sink cupboards were mercifully spared) she managed to reveal the white porcelain beneath. Alice leaped out of the way when she turned on the tap: she had expected another rush of blood to pour out of the spigot, and almost wept with relief when the water was clear. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hunching naked in the shower, scrubbing with only her hands and watching the water swirl pink down the drain, she managed to get most of the blood off of her skin and hair. The bar of soap had turned rosy when she laid it back on the shelf, and Alice wrapped herself in the last clean towel - even this one had somehow picked up little droplets of red - and sprinted through the slick of blood on the floor to get to the hallway. At the last moment she remembered the postcard - only the front of it was bloody, the poem remained intact - and tucked in under her towel in the crook of her armpit. She balled her bloodstained clothes into a bundle and held them as far away from her as she could. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her father didn’t look up from the TV as she sprinted across the hallway to her bedroom door. Safely inside her room, she wiped blood vigorously from her feet and shoved the dirty towel and clothes under her bed. She dressed quickly in pajamas and braided her wet hair, numb with shock and horror. Her right arm ached in a dull, disconnected way, and when she looked at it she saw it had swollen to twice the size of the other one. Her pajama sleeve was already tight around the place that would bruise. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It took a long time for her to fall asleep. She could still smell the blood in her nose and throat, and there was pink blood under the fingernails on her right hand. She watched the shadows from the window lengthen on the wall for what felt like hours, tasting blood in her mouth and remembering the voice that had burbled out of the drain. Her father’s words came back to her as she lingered on the edge of sleep, and she turned them over in her mind. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I worry too, Daddy,</span>
  </em>
  <span> she thought.</span>
  <em>
    <span> I do too. I worry a LOT. </span>
  </em>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span>Alice avoided the bathroom the next morning. She woke and dressed quickly in jeans and a sweatshirt, and made her father eggs and toast at the stove. The back burner was the only one that worked, so she stood on a plastic stool to reach it. After she had delivered a plate of breakfast to her father’s spot at the head of the table, she crossed to the fridge to pour him a glass of orange juice. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Make me some bacon,” he said without looking up from the paper. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We haven’t got any,” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Some hamburger, then.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“There’s only a little left--” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Roger snapped his paper down and stared at her over the Sports section. The stare made an icy chill of fear steal up Alice’s spine. Her bruised arm throbbed in the sleeve of her sweater. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes, daddy,” she said quietly, and went over to the freezer. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>When she had cooked the meat and Roger was eating, she packed his lunch - two baloney sandwiches and a big piece of stale coffee cake, a thermos of coffee that she turned upside-down over the sink to make sure it wouldn’t leak. He rose from the table, folding the paper briskly and leaving the dishes for her to put away, and kissed her roughly on the head. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Good-bye, Daddy.” she said, and waited until he had gone away down the path to relax. As they always did, her shoulders loosened as he turned out of sight, and she fought down a painful feeling of guilt. She did the breakfast dishes quickly and put them away. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The bathroom door was closed, but the awful thing behind it had stolen into her memory, and Alice had avoided the hallway like the plague since waking up. She opened it now and saw with horrified dismay that nothing had changed - if anything it looked worse than ever in the stark light of morning, the walls and the fixtures dripping with gore the bright color of cranberry sauce. Some of it had dried, especially around the light, but most of it was still fresh and wet. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She had to tell someone. She had to show someone. Someone who could tell her once and for all if she was crazy… and maybe that was the best of two options, because what was the alternative? Dead kids in the drain, that was what. Blood that no one else could see. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She thought again of the postcard, and the lines of poetry that had seemed so comforting last night. Alice retrieved it from her bedroom drawer and shoved it in the front pocket of her jeans, pushing it down until it lay flat against her leg. It made her feel a little braver. Special, maybe. Or maybe, (and this was what it really felt like, although she didn’t have the words to explain it) it seemed like a solid thing that carried some hidden protection, like a talisman from a scary movie. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>In the bright gaze of the summer sun, she locked the apartment behind her and began to walk towards town. Her blonde hair gleamed across her shoulders like fire. </span>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span>It was a Saturday, not too long after the day Harry Clayton had taken off to go fishing. Alice decided to skirt down the back alley behind Center Street Drug, because Hermione Reyes, the pharmacist’s daughter, was often at her post at the front counter. The last time she had walked past the drugstore Hermione had been out front, sweeping off the stoop, and she had called out something to Alice that had been lifted directly from the public school’s bathroom wall. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alice had whipped out her middle finger and told Hermione to sit on it, and that helped, a little. But the words made her feel sick in the way the blood had, and she didn’t think she could take any more of that feeling. Not until she spoke to someone who could tell her whether she was crazy or not. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>When she reached the mouth of the alley she turned left, away from the drugstore, and came upon a cluster of bikes outside the arcade. Alice knew Fred rode a big silver one - she had often seen him pedaling it away from the school, his jaw clenched and straining as he stood on the huge pedals to get it up to speed, and then flying once it was going, almost as fast as a car. She couldn’t see Fred’s bike among the others, but the number was right for a group of kids, so she went in. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The cool of the arcade hit her immediately, an arctic smell of damp air and popcorn. The floor at the entrance was a linoleum checkerboard, which turned to carpet a few feet out; a black nylon worn by years of child’s shoes and scattered with fluorescent rainbow stars. Both long walls were lined tightly with machines, each of which emitted its own high-pitched hum, like alien spacecraft. The air was full of the sounds of gameplay: cartoonish zings and woops and the </span>
  <em>
    <span>rat-tat-tat </span>
  </em>
  <span>of fake gunfire. Alice found who she was looking for without much trouble: FP Jones was standing clustered at a machine near the entrance with Hiram Lodge, Mary Moore, and Hal Cooper. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Come on, come on!” FP was yelling at Hal, while Hiram rose excitedly up and down on the balls of his feet to see better. “Hit the guy, hit the guy - oh.” There was a collective slumping of shoulders as Hal seemed to lose, and even in the dim light Alice could see the heavier boy blushing. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sorry,” Hal apologized quickly. He was a kid for whom apologies seemed to come naturally, as though they were an accepted and necessary part of going about one's daily routine. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nice going,” FP complained, shoving the glasses up the bridge of his nose in a quick motion. “That was our last token, numbnuts.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Shut up, FP,” said Mary. She patted the pockets of her neat khaki shorts until she found a quarter, which she handed to Hal. “What happened to all the money you were bragging about at the dam?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why, I spent it all, didn’t I guv’nor!” FP piped up, and Hiram winced. “Toodle pip and tally-ho! Got to do my part for the war effort, din’ I? All got to do our bloody part-” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mary spread her hands. “Okay, okay, sorry I asked.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Dude, can you not do the British guy right now?” Hiram complained. Hal returned with a token, which Hiram fed into a slot on the front of the machine. “I’m trying to focus.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>FP stayed silent until Hiram picked up the controls and started fighting. Then he coughed loudly in Hiram’s ear, spraying the side of his face with spit. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Augh!” Hiram leaped away from the machine, wiping furiously at his cheek. Whirling around to face FP, he started punching him in the chest. “I hate you!” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Stop, stop.” Mary dropped both of her arms between them, pushing them apart. She was dressed like a miniature adult in a short-sleeved button-down and practical hiking boots, her boys’ white socks folded neatly down over the tops of the boots. “I don’t want to get thrown out again.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He started it!” Hiram cried, pointing at FP, who crossed his eyes hideously and stuck out his tongue. Mary rolled her eyes and took over the game, shoving FP out of the way with her hip as she turned to face the screen. Hal watched this process with a subdued respect. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Of the four of them, Alice knew FP the best. They had seen the same horror movie at the Aladdin theatre next door a few days ago, and had sat side by side in the balcony. It was a good movie, and they’d laughed and screamed at all the same parts. But she knew with an oddly pervasive certainty that he had not been the one to send her the poem. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She walked closer to them now, tucking her hands into the pockets of her jeans. “Hi,” she said, and all of them started at her voice. Hiram gasped like he’d seen a ghost. Hal’s blush spread all the way down his face. FP shoved his glasses up and blinked rapidly. Only Mary seemed unperturbed, her eyes still glued to the screen. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hi,” said FP, nudging Hiram in the stomach with his elbow. The smaller boy was wearing a cream-colored polo shirt over short red shorts, and socks that were pulled up to his calves. A fanny pack was buckled securely around his waist like a seatbelt. He stumbled slightly at the pressure of FP’s nudge, and glared at him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Is Fred around?” Alice asked, ignoring the gesture. She could feel the shape of the bloodstained postcard from where she’d slid it into her pocket. It felt almost heavy against the lining of her jeans. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fred Andrews!” FP yelled in his British accent. “Wot-wot! Bloody wanker, isn’t ‘e, Hiram? ‘Avent seen bugger all of the chap-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He’s meeting us later,” Hiram said, cutting FP off. He spoke quickly and nervously, as though accustomed to speaking in a rush. “He wants to play baseball or something, if we can round up enough guys.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kids usually played baseball in the vacant lot behind the Tracker Brothers Trucking Depot in the summer, and even the rich kids whose parents paid for Little League the rest of the year often showed up to round out the teams. Alice secretly wanted to join them, but worried about word getting back to her father, who would undoubtedly have something to say about his daughter playing baseball down there with seventeen boys. Oh, there were other girls who played sometimes, Mary included, but mostly it was boys: and most boys either liked Alice too much or hated her on sight. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Again, she touched the shape of the postcard through her jeans pocket. Hal had said nothing, but was staring at her fixedly while the others spoke. Alice caught his eye, and a deep blush immediately spread back down his face into his neck. Hal had been in her class even since October, but he had barely said a word to her in all that time. He looked quickly away, and Alice found herself liking him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I need to show you guys something,” she said, turning to Hiram again. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay, but I don’t think they let you take your top off in here,” FP replied. Mary slapped him on the side of the head. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ow! I’m just telling you what’s on the sign.” There was a large yellow sign that said NO SHIRT, NO SHOES, NO SERVICE on the front door. FP held his head in exaggerated distress. “Besides, Hiram’s never seen tits before. I mean, unless you count his mom’s-” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Shut up, FP.” said Hal. There was a moment of brief silence in which everyone looked at him in utter surprise. FP opened his mouth and then closed it again, impressed. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Touche, Sloth,” he said finally. FP scanned their mystified faces for a germ of recognition. “Sloth from the Goonies?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re an idiot,” said Mary, and turned back to Alice, abandoning the game controls. “What happened?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not here,” said Alice, looking around. “Let’s go outside.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They followed her into the alley beside the arcade with some reluctance. Alice turned and faced them, wringing her hands together. She had a fleeting concern about what her father would say if one of the neighbors happened to see them, but she pushed it down. FP looked at the others. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So should we all just take our clothes off, or…?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Shut up, FP,” said Hal again, and then smiled hesitantly. FP grinned crookedly back at him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Maybe we should wait for Fred,” Hiram spoke up. Alice noticed his voice shook just a little, as though he had impossibly guessed at what she was going to say. His eyes were dark with concern, and he pressed a white inhaler to his lips. “Does anyone think we should wait-?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What is it?” Mary asked, turning to Alice. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alice explained as best she could about the blood and the voices from the drain. The color drained slowly out of Hiram’s face until his cheeks were as gray as chalk. All traces of a smile slid from FP’s face, replaced by a look of serious concern. Mary was pale under her freckles. Alice looked from one face to the next and found no disbelief reflected in their eyes. Only dread. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hal’s eyes were very worried. “Did it hurt you?” he asked, and Alice shook her head. Her conviction that she was crazy had begun to dissolve, replaced by a concern that </span>
  <em>
    <span>these</span>
  </em>
  <span> kids were crazy. They were acting as though this conversation made perfect sense. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, but it said it would. And-” She hadn’t told them yet that the ghost with Betty Ripsom’s voice had known each of their names. Alice hesitated, licking her dry lips. “I need to be sure that someone else can see it. Because my dad couldn’t. He couldn’t see it at all.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Worry, patience, but no disbelief. They all nodded somberly, weighing her words. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’ll wait here for Fred,” said Mary decisively. “And then we’ll go look.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It took less than a few minutes for Fred to show up on his bike. He had his baseball mitt dangling from his handlebars, and a bag with a baseball bat was slung upon his back. He </span>
  <em>
    <span>was </span>
  </em>
  <span>cute - Hermione Reyes was right about that. As he balanced his bike with one foot, the heavy-looking backpack laying effortlessly along his spine, he looked strong and noble, like a small knight on a great metallic steed. He was wearing a big T-shirt that hung loose on his slender frame, and his brown hair fell neatly over his forehead. Not for the first time, Alice wondered why and how he had come to own a bike so large. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Alice saw something,” FP said. His eyes went right to Fred’s when he was talking, and Fred held his gaze before sliding his eyes to Alice’s. Her heart thumped painfully. “Something else.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alice told him as quickly as she could about the blood and the voices that had risen from the drain. Fred nodded, looking grim. He said nothing about the baseball he had come there to play. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“L-Let’s go,” he said, and looked around. “H-Has everyone g-got bikes?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They all did, except for Alice. Fred gestured to the package carrier behind him with a tilt of his head. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Y-You c-can cuh-climb on if you w-want.” He said gallantly. “Or w-we can w-walk.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alice did climb on, swinging one leg over the side of the bike. It was so high that she almost lost her balance. She put one hand tentatively on each of Fred’s shoulders and squeezed tight. Something about his strength and confidence made him seem deceptively broad when he was standing  - now that her fingers were fastened to his shoulders she could feel the ridges of bone under her hands. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Alright?” he asked, and a thrill stole through her at his kindness. “It’ll f-feel luh-like we’re going to f-fall b-but we w-won’t. I p-promise.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She nodded before realizing he couldn’t see her. “Okay,” she said instead, and Fred steered them out of the alley and into the road, the others forming a small swarm of bikes behind them. </span>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span>When they reached the squat block of apartments on Lower Main, Alice ushered them into a side alley, where they left their bikes leaning against the brick in a row. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We have to go around back. If one of the neighbors sees me sneaking you in when my dad’s not home, there’ll be trouble.” What she didn’t say was that the fact that they were mostly boys would make it worse. Something in Mary’s face, though, suggested she understood. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“FP, y-you s-stay here and s-stand g-guard,” Fred suggested. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why the hell do I have to do it?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You got the biggest mouth,” said Mary. “If someone shows up, you can stall them.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>FP sighed, resigned. “It is a gift.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They went in through the side door, stepping over a low stone wall that bordered what had once been a garden and was now a decrepit collection of weeds. Fred held the door open over their heads, and once they were all inside, he closed it quickly. The light in the apartment was very dim. Alice was conscious of the particular home smell she had never noticed before, something faintly damp and cellar-like. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“L-Lead the w-way,” said Fred, and Hiram sucked worriedly on his inhaler. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>A horrible prospect occurred to Alice as she opened the bathroom door and flicked on the light: maybe none of them would see it after all. This apprehension vanished almost immediately: Hiram gagged loudly and took a forceful blast on his inhaler that sounded like a jet engine taking off. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do you see it?” Alice asked desperately. Hal was staring goggle-eyed at the mirror. Mary’s jaw hung open in slack contemplation of the spray across the shower curtain. Fred stood in front of them all, his eyes roving silently over the blood-splattered walls and ceiling as though taking measurements. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It came from the drain,” Alice explained, and Fred took two steps inside and looked down into the sink. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She thought of what it had said again - </span>
  <em>
    <span>tell Fred Oscar misses him</span>
  </em>
  <span> - and fought the urge to yell at him to stay away. The blood hadn’t dried, apart from where it had cooked onto the light: the rest was as thick and crimson as ever. A bead of it oozed slowly down the side of the mirror, swelling into a red bulb and landing in the gore-streaked soap dish with a </span>
  <em>
    <span>plop. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“We can’t leave it like this,” said Mary plainly, and Alice felt a rush of gratitude and relief. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’ll c-c-clean it,” said Fred. “It won’t t-take luh-long with a-all of us.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Clean all this?” Hiram asked, looking around at the walls. His eyes were huge and round in his pale face. “I can’t touch this. What if it’s - what if it’s -” Whatever he was trying to say was so frightening to him that he couldn’t complete the sentence. He wheezed on his inhaler and then leaned over so his head was between his legs. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Go outside w-with FP, then,” said Fred, not altogether unkindly, but with a parental firmness that suggested it was the only option. Looking back, Alice would think that was maybe when she had fallen in love with him, or at least thought she had. They all loved Fred a little, that was the truth. Each of them did. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hiram swallowed hard, but he meekly accepted the rag that Mary handed him and twisted it in his hands. She had opened the cupboard under the sink and was squatting down to see better, the neat folds of her socks very white against the bloodstained floor. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Detergent,” said Mary, taking inventory of the cabinet’s contents. “We need detergent. And a bucket. And more rags.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“My dad will notice if they go missing,” Alice spoke up. Oddly, the thought of her father’s anger made her feel safer than anything. It was normal, predictable. It was </span>
  <em>
    <span>right. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“I have a couple of dollars,” said Mary calmly. “We can go down to the laundromat and get them clean.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The relief of having a group of people that believed her was such that Alice thought her legs would give out. She slumped slightly against the bloody door, tears bolting into her eyes. A sharp pressure on her wrist made her look down, and she saw Fred had squeezed her hand. It lasted only a second, and then he let go, his hand falling back to his side. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hal was watching this nervously, licking his lips. He stepped abruptly up to her other shoulder and suddenly blushed the colour of a sunset, looking shocked at his own daring. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t worry,” he said earnestly when she looked at him, though his face flamed a beautiful scarlet. “We’ll get it clean.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Cleaning the bathroom took almost an hour. Hal and Hiram did the sink and mirror while she and Fred crouched down to scrub the floor. Mary studiously washed the walls, dabbing paint from the wallpaper and scrubbing in between each tile. It took only a few minutes for the water in the bucket to run pink and then red, and Fred diligently emptied it every time the color changed. This was mostly for Hiram’s benefit, who gagged whenever his hands touched red water, but it relieved Alice too. Slowly the stained linoleum floor and the frog wallpaper border began to reveal themselves, and her breath came easier until she felt light-headed with relief. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>When the room was clean, they stood back and looked at it. Alice had never seen the bathroom so clean in all her life. Even the inside of the light fixture, which had been housing streaky grime and decaying moths, was sparkling. There was a faint pink blotch of a few inches diameter on the wallpaper above the sink, and that was all. Mary patted it gently with a rag and looked to Alice for approval, who nodded with such fervent gratitude that her throat closed up. One of them - it might have been Hiram, who was studiously washing his hands at the sink every few minutes - had pushed the rubber plug into the drain at the base of the sink. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alice stood at Fred’s shoulder as he poured the last bucket of bloody water into the tub. When he turned to look at her she was struck by the kindness in his eyes - they were big and brown and truthful and completely unlike her father’s, and it was that quality more than anything that made her heart skip a beat. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s not true,” she said, without planning to say it. She glanced over her shoulder, but the other kids had gone to replace the detergent in the hall closet and they were alone. “What they say about me at school. I know what they write in the bathrooms, but it’s not - it’s not true.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fred accepted this with barely a nod of his head. His stutter made him quiet: when something was too complex or nuanced to express without halting, he said nothing at all. Teachers often yelled at him in class as though they believed he was deaf. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You like baseball, huh?” she said. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Y-yeah.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And - and poetry?” She wanted him to know she’d got the note, know what it had meant to her, that she had slept with it under her pillow and carried it in her pocket now as protection against the unseen cruelty of the world. But Fred just looked at her, not unkindly, but without any kind of recognition. His brow creased very slightly, and he gave her a hesitant smile. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“P-Poetry, s-sure.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He turned away from her to rinse the last of the pink water from the floor of the bath, drying the bucket and replacing it in the cupboard under the sink, and Alice saw what everyone else already knew: that there was goodness in him, ripe and golden and visible, so pure and simple that it defied explanation. It was a fact as concrete as the color of the sky, no more remarkable than saying grass was green and dirt was brown. She thought he would be like that forever: strong and brave and good. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yes, she loved him a little. They all did. </span>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span>They split up in the alleyway alongside the apartment. FP’s mother was making him and Fred lunch, and was insistent they be home at one if they wanted it. Hiram, Hal, and Mary had nothing to do and were willing to go to the laundromat to wash the rags they had used. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay, but could you assholes have taken any longer?” FP greeted them when they stepped out of the side door. He sat on the crumbling garden wall next to their bikes, doing tricks on a yo-yo that had been shoved into one of his limitless pockets. “I mean, seriously. I think I aged forty fucking years while you were in there.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>No one answered him, which FP never seemed to mind. “Where are we going now?” he demanded as the others streamed to their bikes, hoisting handlebars and jabbing at kickstands. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The laundromat,” said Mary. She threw the bloody rags into the basket of her bicycle and swung her leg over the seat. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The laundromat? Oh, that’s thrilling. What’s next on the tour, the grocery store?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alice retrieved her bike from the side of the apartment building and shook off the cobwebs. It was a girl’s bike, with a sloped seat and a basket, but it was fast. She looked at Fred for directions and noticed the rest of the group was doing the same. Fred stood straddling his enormous bike, the baseball mitt still dangling from his handlebars. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“FP and I h-have t-to go. If yuh-you’re g-going to be a-alright-” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Right as rain, Freddie,” said Mary, and Hal nodded, dwarfing his small bike with the bulk of his belly and thighs. Hiram still looked nauseated, but bobbed his head up and down, his lips pressed in a thin line. Like Fred, his feet barely reached the pedals of his red bike, but his was much smaller; a kid’s bike, no more than twenty inches.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>FP glanced at their faces, and a flicker of worry crossed his expression. For a very brief moment there was a ghost in his face of the adult he would become in some twenty-seven years. “Maybe we shouldn’t split up, Fred.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’ve got to split up one day,” said Mary. It was not altogether an odd thing to say, but no one knew the truth of it then. Alice looked around, struck for no particular reason by their number. The sun had come all the way up in the sky, and the heat of the day was building up from the pavement. Her armpits were damp beneath her sweatshirt. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Six,</span>
  </em>
  <span> she thought. </span>
  <em>
    <span>There are six of us.</span>
  </em>
  <span> It was an odd thing to think, and yet she felt definitively that someone was missing. They were an odd group all right, a real bunch of weirdos - the bottom of the Riverdale Public School social chain, that was for sure. The stuttering freak, the fat kid, the slut, the asthmatic, the Jewish kid who tucked her pants into her socks, and well… FP was in a league all on his own. No one was missing that she could see, but the gap that person left seemed briefly enormous. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’ll see you later,” said Mary. Fred hadn’t confided in her what he planned to discuss with FP over lunch, but she met his eyes as though she sensed it somehow. For a moment they looked at one another in uneasy understanding, and then her eyes flickered away. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fred and FP biked off together towards Witcham Street. The other four took off in the opposite direction, heading towards the laundromat. They biked hard up to the Main Street Bridge, their tires thudding over the wooden planks and kicking up sharp darts of gravel. Once they had safely rolled past the theatre and the arcade and were under the tree-lined cover of town they began to coast, panting with exertion, the low-hanging branches of elms fluttering just over their heads, down past the strip where the Fourth of July parade would be held and towards the yellow siding of the Washateria. </span>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span>The Klean Kloze Washateria stood on the corner of Main and Cony Streets, a peeling yellow building with a line of plate glass windows that faced the street. Summer sun slanted through the dusty glass, landing in streaks on the nondescript tabletops with their assortments of wrinkled magazines. Dried-out houseplants stood vigil over each corner table, and sleek plastic chairs sat facing the washers in rows. It was hot and sunny inside, the inverse of the arcade’s tenebrous chill. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Among the ominous churning of washers and the rattle-bang of dryers, the four of them sat in a line. Alice found she felt stronger and stronger the longer the foam swirled against the washing machine door. She had brought the towel and the bloody clothes from under her bed, and they would be cleaned too, and once all that was clean she could really breathe easier. She felt that this had been the proper thing to do, that they had made some small step toward putting things right. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>In the seat next to her, Mary was absorbed in thoughts of the opposite. It seemed to Mary that by cleaning the bathroom they had declared war on It somehow. Not war exactly… but they had pushed back. In doing so they had drawn themselves inevitably nearer to confrontation. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She looked up and met the other girl’s eyes. Alice’s face had a ghostly bruise on it, a sour yellow not unlike the Washateria’s walls. Earlier she had caught Hal looking at it sadly. Hiram was very still, curled up in his chair with his chin resting on his hand and his high-tops pulled up off the floor. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s not just you,” said Hal. He was looking at Alice with a look of such tenderness on his face that Mary felt briefly embarrassed for him. He swallowed and pulled the sleeves of his big sweatshirt over his hands. “Me, and Hiram, and Fred, we’ve all seen things too.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Like the blood?” Alice asked, and there was hope in her expression. “Things no one else has?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not exactly,” said Hal, and after looking at each of the others as if for permission, began to explain: starting inexplicably from the day he had met Hiram and Fred in the barrens, as though Alice would need context for why he had friends. He described the mummy he had seen across the canal, the leper that had chased Hiram through the Neibolt yard, the photo of Oscar Andrews that had begun to pour blood. It took almost the whole wash cycle to complete the story. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You too?” Alice asked, and Mary realized she was looking at her. Hal opened his mouth as if to correct her, and then shut it again, looking questioningly at Mary. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>As she had done on the day they built the dam, Mary stood up. She was looking at the water that had barely finished tumbling against the glass of the washing machine, which shut off with a loud click under her gaze. The silence that replaced the tumbling seemed to have a tangible weight, the humming of the Klean Kloze Washateria’s fluorescent lights receding from the stillness. Mary took out the wet rags and examined them, holding them out for the others’ inspection. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“There’s a bit of a stain, but they aren’t too bad,” she said, handing them to Hal, who nodded and passed them to Alice. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Doesn’t matter, I guess,” said Alice, and a muscle in her jaw twitched as though she wanted to laugh. “He can’t see it.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The others laughed, nervously, as though she had told a joke. Mary tossed them into one of the dryers and fed it two quarters. Then she returned to her chair. They sat in silence again, Hiram staring down at the floor between his shoes and Hal looking at Alice with the kind of slack-jawed wonder usually reserved for works of great art. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I did see something,” Mary admitted. Her admission hung in the air above the dryers, where the rags tumbled like small parachutes in a rattling, cream-colored sky under glass. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why didn’t you say something before?” Hal asked. There was no trace of accusation in his tone. Instead, there was a kindness and a straightforward sincerity that caught her off guard. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Because… because it was wrong.” Mary looked from one face to the next, wanting them to understand that she hadn’t just been scared of the thing, but - and this was the closest word she could find - offended by it. Offended in a way that touched her deep down to the marrow of her bones, that ran through her blood and into her heart. Some things were </span>
  <em>
    <span>wrong. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Some things went against everything you knew of the world, where all of it could be measured and plotted and figured out, in order to accept some things you would have to decide two and two made nine and water was dry. But she looked into their faces and knew they didn’t understand, that they couldn’t. That it was only her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I was scared,” she amended. “But I’ll tell you now.” </span>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span>The Riverdale Standpipe, like the once-noble Ironworks factory and the controversial Paul Bunyan statue at the city center, was one of the local landmarks that a well-meaning but misguided visitor’s guidebook might have called charming. From the outside it looked simple enough: it was a tall, round, shingled building with a circular picnic gallery just below the slightly pointed roof. Inside the building, around the cylindrical center chamber that held the water, there was a set of curving stairs that rose and rose inside to allow access to this gallery from the ground. Around the turn of the century, this gallery had been a popular place for families to enjoy luncheons in the park. Later on it became a kind of attraction in its own right, where locals or visitors could amuse themselves climbing the one-hundred-and-sixty steep iron stairs for the reward of admiring the view of Riverdale from a hundred and six feet off the earth. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Over a hundred years ago the Standpipe had supplied water throughout the town. It was no longer the only source of water, but the water in the tank remained, as a sort of backup reservoir in the case of a fire. Just below the galley level a service door led to a platform above the water, where technicians could enter to make necessary adjustments and repairs. The ceiling of the tank housed a few eerie bulbs of light in cages not unlike those in the school gym, and the platform was only about four feet square and so near to the water that when the tank was full it lapped less than a quarter-foot below it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mary, on the day that she had come face to face with what the others had taken to calling the clown, had not been visiting the Standpipe. She had biked to Memorial Park in the lightly falling rain to see an entirely different landmark: the old, stone birdbath that stood approximately where the Black Spot had caught fire in the 1960s. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mary’s father had called her from work to say a co-worker of his had spotted a rare bird in Memorial Park a few nights ago, and if she was done helping her mother with the dinner chores (he was very clear on this point), maybe she would like to go out and collect it. Her father shared her interest in bird-watching, and had been the one to buy her the bird-book she was carrying that day, a hardcover duplicate of the book that Harry Clayton would return to the library on the first day of summer. The bird in question was of the species </span>
  <em>
    <span>c. cardinalis</span>
  </em>
  <span> - the male Northern cardinal. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The sun - what little there had been of it that day, which was dark and rainy - was already on its way down when her father called. This was two months ago, after Cheryl Lamonica had been recovered but before Matthew Clements had gone missing, but Mary’s parents weren’t worried about her being out on her own. Cheryl Lamonica’s death, after all, could be explained away as the work of a jealous boyfriend, and Oscar - well, no one knew for sure what had got Oscar, but it was probably a sex-fiend passing through. This was the word currently being passed from book club to church group, and Mrs. Moore had overheard the theory at the grocery store. Yes, a sex fiend (they spelled the word out around children) but one who had probably moved on from the area. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>A cursory worry did pass her mother’s mind when Mary told her where she was going, but she shook it away with a feeling almost like amusement. The odds of Mary going off somewhere with a stranger were about as probable as Arizona seeing snow on the fourth of July. Mary’s nature was to be discreet and cautious, and above all, Mary was startlingly bright for her age. As far as her mystified parents could tell she had never made a bad decision, nor had she wanted to. She was fastidious, honest, and punctual, not the characteristics of the most recent victims, who had been foolish as well as young. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They let her go to the birdbath. She packed her binoculars and her bird-book in her bag with a spiral-bound notebook and pulled the hood of her raincoat up over her head without her mother having to remind her. Yanking the string of the hood tight to cover her curls, Mary went out into the rain. She was not expecting, as another child might, to magically see the cardinal just because her father had brought it up, and she would certainly never settle for seeing some other red bird, like a tanager. Mary would go to the park with the simple intention of being there in case of a sighting, and only if she was certain would she carefully collect the bird in her notebook and be on her way. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She biked to the park and stashed her bike carefully under a bench to avoid rust. Then she continued on foot across the damp grass towards the center of Memorial Park. Situating herself in the bushes opposite the birdbath, Mary waited, which was not altogether an unpleasant task. The late-winter day smelled of spring coming, and the air and drizzly sky held a note of freshness and rebirth. She had had the sense to dress warmly, and was indeed as snug as possible in a warm sweater that had been her father’s and two pairs of socks. The rain became less of a drizzle and more of a mist, and in a way it was almost pleasant, like the ghost-spray from walking near the fire-hoses at the Fourth of July fair. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She had checked the bird-book entry several times, and now went over the notes again in her head. She had looked at the photo so often that she could conjure it in her mind’s eye without trying - distinctive from other songbirds because of the cone-shaped beak and prominent raised crest as well as the red plumage and the size. The scarlet plumage, she knew, was produced from carotenoid pigments in the diet. Mary unbuckled the binocular case in her lap and trained them on the birdbath. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She amused herself by watching the other birds for a while. Some of them she knew well, could pick out identifying details like a torn wing or an odd coloring that meant she had seen this particular bird before. The same birds came often to the Memorial Park birdbath, like old friends catching up over drinks. The Standpipe was behind her from this angle, a blobby white smear barely visible through the fog. Mary had barely looked at it while biking in. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She had trained the focus on a sweet, smart little brown bird that looked like it might have been a cowbird (or maybe just a common sparrow) when a loud noise that sounded like a thunderclap rocked through the park and sent the birds scattering away from the water. The bird was big, she noticed as she watched the streaky brown blur vanish into the trees, maybe a cowbird after all, but she hadn’t had time to make note of anything more than the most cursory of identifying characteristics. The cardinal had never appeared. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mary was somewhat disappointed, but had readied herself for this possibility, and put her binoculars studiously away in her bag. It was getting late now, and the mist had turned to fog. In an hour the streetlights would come on, and though her mother hadn’t given her a specific time, Mary assumed she ought to be home before they did. She walked towards the Standpipe, using the glowing white cylinder as a landmark to light her way through the darkened park.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was odd, she thought as she approached it, with the fog in the park it almost seemed disconnected from the ground, like a white-sheeted ghost in a Halloween cartoon. The Standpipe almost seemed to - </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>to float.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>It was a weird thought, and she shook it away. Still, she was relieved when she got close enough to see it was indeed firmly attached to the ground - she could see the base of the shingled tower rutted firmly in among the grass and the weeds. As she drew closer she noticed there were bits of wood and rubble lying here and there around the base, as though a very small bomb had gone off. And in the shingled wall before her, at the end of this trail of debris, there was a gap. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was a door - a heavy wooden one, curved at the top like the entrance to a Hobbit-hole, but more than tall enough for a grown person. The odd thing was that it was open. A smashed shingle some two feet to the left of it showed where it had flung open and left a mark on the outside of the Standpipe. </span>
</p><p><em><span>It’s odd that they leave it unlocked</span></em><span>, she thought, and then: </span><em><span>I guess</span></em> <em><span>that noise I heard was the door opening in the wind. </span></em></p><p>
  <span>Only there was no wind that evening - none at all, and certainly not enough to fling open such a heavy door with force enough to shatter one of the white shingles. The inside of the standpipe, dark and beckoning, was a black abyss in the white wall. Mary had never been inside the Standpipe, even with her family, and felt curious. As she stepped towards the open door, her rainbooted feet crunched over the remains of a heavy padlock, blown to pieces. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mary stepped inside. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The narrow iron stairs curved around the room in a spiral. Add in the rain and the mist and the whole thing had the feeling of a lighthouse, abandoned on some rocky crag somewhere to lead sailors safely to shore. For a moment Mary felt a slight buzz that would have been familiar to Harry Clayton or Hal Cooper- the pleasing tickle of being in a place that held great historical significance. </span>
  <em>
    <span>This is an old place,</span>
  </em>
  <span> she thought, and why should that feel so foreboding? Riverdale </span>
  <em>
    <span>was</span>
  </em>
  <span> old, old enough to have a rich history dating back to settler times. They had gone over it all in school. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mary turned to leave. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She had gone no further than the door when the music started, the fairground twinkle of a calliope, jaunty and bright. It seemed to be coming from the roof high above her, drifting down with the tantalizing promise of some unseen carnival: whirling rides and shows and </span>
  <em>
    <span>step-right-up </span>
  </em>
  <span>games of chance, fluffy clouds of cotton candy and greasy hot dogs on a stick. Mary’s parents said she was mature for her age - but she was also a kid, and she was not immune to the charms of fairground music and the suggestion of bright, whirling rides in the darkness somewhere over her head. Nor was she immune to the smells of popcorn and sugar that drifted down to her from the stairs, as though a row of food vendors had suddenly set up camp. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She stepped up the first two steps of the steel stairs and cocked her head to see better, searching for some explanation as to how a small carnival could have opened in the Standpipe on such a damp April day. The smells and sounds got stronger as she did: the ferris wheel, the tilt-a-whirl, the rattle-clatter of a roller coaster, a smell of salt and vinegar and caramel apples. Above it all the magical calliope played its jaunty tune, a song she recognized but couldn’t place. She thought she had heard it once when she was a child. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hello?” she called up the steps. Mary looked down at her feet and realized she had climbed almost half a flight of the stairs. “Is anyone there?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>No answer but the familiar music, and a shifting of shadows on the Standpipe wall. On this side of the Standpipe the walls were not shingle but wood, and the shadows rippled far above her, like a person passing in front of a flame. An orange glow seemed to be emanating from the top of the Standpipe, homey and warm and exciting, with a rich promise of unseen delight. The disappointment of losing the cardinal was forgotten. Mary hopped up another step, feeling certain that soon the whole carnival would come into sight. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The shadows shifted again, and this time she heard footsteps: wet footsteps, like someone walking through mud. She supposed someone (or two someones) could have come in to get out of the rain, been distracted by the music as she had, and could now be walking down the steel steps making that sound… but a slice of cold fear ran down her back, and the orange light suddenly became less joyful and more disturbing. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then the shadows seemed to solidify - just for a second, like that fleeting glimpse she had caught of the cow-bird, and Mary’s sharp eyes made note of them in no time at all: two human-like shapes, but slumped, and unnatural, moving with a shuffling, inhuman gait that made the hairs on her arms stand up with fear. Then the orange glow faded, and the Standpipe went dark - but the wet footsteps remained, soggy and frightening. And getting closer. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mary ran down two flights of stairs blindly in the dark (She could have sworn that she had only climbed one, and barely remembered doing that) and ran to the wooden door. It was shut, and she lunged against it with all her body weight - but it opened only enough to show a sharp sliver of drizzly grey, and then something pushed it back against her weight, and it slid into the doorframe with a thump. It was as though someone - or something - were standing outside and holding it closed. Panic roared in her chest as though a dam had broken. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was pitch black but she could hear the things coming… the shuffling, wet footsteps that squelched and dripped like they were walking through mud, and over it all the music: old, old, carnival music, the kind her father must have heard before she was born. Older than that, maybe. It felt suddenly elemental, as old as time itself. The smell of popcorn was gone, replaced with a thick stench of decay. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Let me out!” Mary cried, and pushed against the door with all her strength. This time the give was even less than before. It was like pushing against a solid wall. The steel stairs above her vibrated with the weight of whatever was coming, and she felt something liquid run up against the back of her ankles. She could hear the sound of water trickling down the metal stairs. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She shoved the door again, losing track of what was the door and what was the wall. The music was slowing, slowing, becoming a dirge, like a record that had been warped and played back at the wrong speed. The footsteps were coming closer, soggy, dragging steps that carried the odor of wet wood and rotten meat. The orange light flickered once - it was enough to see the slumped shapes of something on the stairwell right behind her - and then it was gone. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Who’s there!” Mary yelled, and the voice that answered her seemed to come out of everywhere at once, not a cheerful carny-voice but a voice that conjured up the bottom of leaf-strewn swimming pools,the sight of a dead mouse she had once seen dancing in the current at the town pool, trapped forever in the lapping water: </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“We’re the dead ones, Mary. We sank in the Standpipe, and now we’re dead. We sank but now we float, and you could float too…” </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>She pressed her back to the door, and the corner of something sharp jammed into her spine. It was the hardcover bird book. Without really thinking about why she was doing it, without thinking at all, in fact, Mary whipped off her bookbag and undid the drawstring with fumbling hands. It was dark, but she navigated by instinct, opening the bag and yanking out the hard-edged book, even studiously securing the flap and swinging the bag back over her shoulder before she held it up. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She couldn’t see it, but she knew it was the bird book - knew it by the shape and size and the hard, familiar edge that cut into her hand. She held it in front of her as the wet things squelched closer, holding it like vampire hunters would hold a crucifix in the movies, like a knight would hold a shield. She wore a Star of David around her neck, and this she touched too, squeezing it between the thumb and forefinger of her opposite hand while she thrust the bird book at the shuffling shadows in the dark. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Cowbirds!” she screamed into the dark, and heard the wet footsteps ahead of her go still. There was an instant of give in the door she was leaning against, and she raised her voice louder: “Cardinals!” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The door creaked. She was standing up straight, suddenly, her fingers pressing dents into the cardstock cover of the book. She began to recite as though saying an incantation, her voice deep and raw and strangely adult: </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Cardinals! Finches! Wrens! Grackles! Sparrows! Nuthatches! Crows! Quail! Warblers!” The door sagged open behind her, and a spray of mist hit her back. “Chickadees! Owls!” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The door opened. She stumbled backward over the rim of the Standpipe and landed hard on her backpack in the grass. She thought for an instant of her binoculars - tucked safely in a protective leather carrying case, true, but delicate all the same - and then she saw something at the base of the stairs that swept all thought of the binoculars from her head. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They were dead. They were visible to her only as two dark shadows in the shape of people, but they were still unmistakably dead. She could see, as well as smell, the rot. White holes glittered in their faces where there ought to be eyes. Water dripped off their bodies and puddled around their feet. When the dusk slid just right across the entrance to the Standpipe she saw a series of their features in snapshot succession: their feet were bare, purple and swollen. Their pants were dripping wet, as though they had just emerged from a thorough swim. They wore letterman jackets that had been drenched to a dark black, and their bone-white hands hung down from the sleeves, water running down the wrists and pouring onto the ground. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She was outside the Standpipe now, using her heels to shove herself away through the wet grass, away from the hole through which the dead things stood. She saw their pale, drowned hands, limp and featureless, turn out towards her. The hands were a pure moon-white, almost like gloves, she thought, as the gloves a clown would wear - and in the palm of each was a bright orange pompom. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Holding the book in front of her, she continued to chant. “Seagulls…” she rasped. “Ravens… Woodpeckers… Pelicans…” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The door of the Standpipe swung shut, sealing the drowned things back into the dark. </span>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span>When Mary stopped talking, she hung her head and folded her hands in her lap. She had a sudden urge to tell them it wasn’t true, that she’d made it all up - only no one could make up a story like that, not even Fred, who was the best at telling stories when they had campfires. She looked at her clean hiking boots on the Washateria floor, and the pristine folds of her socks made her feel a little better. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jeez,” said Hiram hoarsely. His face had gone drawn and pale, and he looked thin in the fluorescent light, even sickly. Hal could only nod and repeat the sentiment. Alice looked horrified, chewing on the ends of her blonde hair. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The laundry was done. Mary got up and took the rags out of the dryer, as warm and as soft now as kittens. Like the wallpaper, one of them still had a faint pink smear, but the others were fine. Not, Mary reflected, that Alice’s father - or maybe any grown-up, Mary was smart and she had puzzled out that much - would see it anyway. She placed them on a chair and added Alice’s clothes and towels to the pile, then began to fold them carefully. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“There is a story,” said Hal softly. “My aunt told me. I looked it up. Some high-school boys went to the Standpipe on Halloween - I guess this was when it was unlocked all the time - and they went through the wrong door trying to get out to the roof. They went into the tank instead. They yelled for help, but no one could hear them, and the sides were too smooth to get back up. They just treaded water until they drowned.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, God,” said Alice, who was very pale. She pulled a strip of hair from her mouth. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“My folks told me the same thing,” Hiram said abruptly. “It’s a bad place, I’m telling you. Really bad. As bad as the house on Neibolt Street.” The alarm on his watch had gone off, and he unzipped his fanny pack and began unpacking pill bottles into his lap. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You should tell Fred,” Hal said. “About the Standpipe. He’ll know what to do.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t want to </span>
  <em>
    <span>do</span>
  </em>
  <span> anything,” Mary said firmly. She had her back to him and continued folding the rags and towels with purposeful hands. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Neither do I,” Hiram piped up. His voice had a slightly hysterical edge that always preceded an asthma attack. “How are we supposed to do anything about that place, huh? And why should we? It’s too much. It’s way too much.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are you kidding?” Alice asked. Her face had gone hard, and there was something luminous and lovely about her features. “We have to do something. Because it isn’t just us. It’s the other kids too. Betty Ripsom, and Matthew Clements, and Ronnie Grogan-” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>While she was speaking, Mary tallied the missing votes in her head. FP had been a skeptic at the dam, claiming he hadn’t seen anything unusual, but he would stick with Fred when it came down to it. Fred… well, Fred was ready for battle. She’d seen it in his eyes today. He really meant to stop it, whatever it was. Stop it or die trying. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>That made a rough four against two. Six - and for some reason, the number gave her pause. She counted again just to be sure. No, there were six of them. Why did the number feel ever so subtly off? </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Alice is right,” said Hal, and tentatively touched her arm. “What if it gets more kids?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s summer,” said Hiram, and to Mary’s alarm, she saw a wet tear running down his cheek. “Please, it’s summer and we’re supposed to be having fun. I don’t want to - I don’t want-” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hal put an arm around him, and Hiram quickly scrubbed his face on the back of his hand. The others politely averted their eyes. Mary folded Alice’s wool skirt, which was slightly damp at the waistband. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’ll tell Fred,” said Hal, his big arm over Hiram’s shoulders. “And then what? Go to the police?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Right,” said Mary cooly. Her hands kept moving of their own accord, folding the rags into a series of perfect squares. She didn’t recognize her voice: it was adult and strange. “We’ll go and say I saw dead kids in the Standpipe, and scared them off by yelling the names of birds. We’ll say blood came out of Alice’s drain, and only we could see it. We’ll tell them about the mummy you saw, and that it was wearing a clown suit like the leper under the porch. Do you think they’ll believe us?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m not even sure I believe it,” said Hal, solemn but good-natured. “I see what you mean.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I believe it,” said Alice, and shuddered. “If you’d seen what I saw you’d believe anything.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll tell him,” Mary said finally. “Fred. And then whatever he says - we’ll do it. But until then that’s the best we can do.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They all relaxed a little, relieved at this solution. Mary had folded Alice’s things in a perfect stack, which she slipped into a paper bag from the table nearest the dryer. She rolled the top neatly down like a school lunch and handed it to the other girl. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thank you,” said Alice, and sat it down carefully next to her feet. “I can pay you back.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mary waved her hand. “Don’t worry about it.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are you sure?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m sure,” said Mary genially. “I mean it’s breaking my heart not to have those three quarters, Alice, really, but I’ll get along.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alice paused, as though unsure if she was joking, and then smiled shyly. “Thank you,” she said, looking around at them. “All of you. If it hadn’t been for you, I don’t know what I would have done.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hal, predictably, blushed again. Hiram sucked loudly on his inhaler, which made the bigger boy jump. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Losers stick together,” said Mary, and Alice smiled at that. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Losers,” she repeated, and Hiram even laughed. They shook on it, feeling briefly like kids again. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They broke up outside the Washateria doors. Hal’s mother wanted him home for dinner, and Hiram and Mary had other plans. Alice left them outside the Klean Kloze and biked home back up Main Street with the paper bag in her bike basket. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The apartment was empty when she unlocked the door, and she immediately went to the hall closet and replaced the rags and towels. She placed her newly cleaned skirt and sweater in her bureau drawer and pushed it shut. From her pocket, she removed the postcard with the haiku and slipped it into her underwear drawer. Finally she folded the paper bag into a square and shoved it in the kitchen trash. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her father kept his tools in the cupboard under the sink. She opened the wooden door and moved some things aside until she found what she was looking for: a measuring tape in a silver case, whose tongue ended in a forked flat of metal about the size of a large toenail. Standing with the weight of the silver tape in her hand, she shifted from foot to foot on the cracked linoleum. Then she strode purposefully to the bathroom and stood above the plugged hole of the drain. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alice took the rubber plug out of the drain hole. Little by little, feeling as guilty as a convict, she fed the yellow tongue of the measuring tape into the drain. It stuck in the U bend of the pipe after about eight inches, and she had to jiggle it to get it free. Jiggling the tape made a strange metallic rattle echo through the pipe like a snake. Then away it went into the drain, the forked metal plate scraping slightly at the sides of the pipe. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Further and further into the drain it disappeared. When she had passed ten feet it jerked suddenly in her hand, as though something down there had grabbed ahold of it, and then it began to run, faster and faster, out of the silver casing and down into the eye of the drain, whisking away into the darkness. When it reached its full eighteen feet it jerked violently so that she had to grab it with both hands, and came to a stop. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then a chuckle came out of the drain, hauntingly familiar. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Alice…. Alice…. You can’t fight us…. You’ll die if you try, Alice… You’ll die if you try….” </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>There was a click from the casing in her hand, and suddenly the tape began to fly back up the mouth of the drain, the metal buzzing violently in her hands as it rewound itself so that she had to fight not to drop it. When the last six feet began to emerge from the pipe she saw that they were coated in thick, spongy blood, and she did drop it, letting the casing go with a shriek so that blood droplets spattered in the basin that Hiram had so diligently scrubbed. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The voice laughed again, and Alice shoved the rubber plug rapidly back into the drain. A dribble of blood suddenly ran out from under the edge of the stopper, but the plug only rose ever so slightly and then was still. Alice carried the measuring tape out into the backyard, spreading it out on the grass and scrubbing it clean with a rag that she tossed into the rusty incinerator when she was done. She replaced it in the cabinet under the sink, and closed the door tightly. When she returned to the bathroom she turned on the water and rinsed the dark blood back down the drain. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The frogs on the wallpaper stared at her with their blind, sightless eyes. She stood there waiting for a few moments, leaning forward so her forehead almost touched her cracked reflection, but the hole in the basin stayed silent. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She put the plug in and walked away. </span>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span>FP had to bike slowly for Fred to catch up at first - the big silver bike took a minute or two to get going, weaving as drunkenly from left to right as it always did, but once it righted itself he had to pump his legs quickly to keep from falling behind. Side by side, they whizzed past the Paul Bunyan statue at the town center, shooting down Up-Mile hill like twin bullets. Fred stood eagerly on his pedals, the summer breeze lifting his brown hair off his head, while FP sat back and showed off, letting his arms dangle and leaning back in his seat. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They slowed only when they turned onto FP’s street, a strip of old townhomes with yards that were nicer than Alice Smith’s apartment but less picturesque than the Andrews home. Fred and FP biked to FP’s house and dismounted at the end of the drive, letting their bikes fall carelessly to the lawn. Mrs. Jones was on the front porch, and she waved at them from her wicker chair. Fred smiled and waved back. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Lunch is ready, boys!” FP’s mother called. FP never planned to admit it, but it hadn’t really been his mother who had insisted they have Fred over for lunch. He figured a guy could only take so much of that silence over at the Andrews house before going crazy, picture or no picture. And Fred loved his mom’s egg salad. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Be right there,” FP called. Fred tugged lightly on his wrist and FP turned to him, the two of them forming a two-man huddle at the edge of the drive. “What?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I w-w-want to g-go to the h-house on N-N-Neibolt Street.” Fred had tried to broach this subject during the bike ride over, but FP had conscientiously pretended not to hear him over the wind. “W-Where Hiram s-saw the l-leper.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What do you wanna do that for?” FP asked. He glanced up at the porch, but his mom had gone inside to fetch the sandwiches.“If you want to see someone with their face all fucked up, you can look in a mirror for free, numbnuts.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fred smiled a little, but didn’t relent. “R-Remember the puh-picture in the a-a-album?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yes, FP remembered. He could dismiss Hiram’s story as fantasy easily enough, but the picture in that album had been real. Fred had three mangled fingers to prove it. And then there was that sick business with the Paul Bunyan statue… only that had been a dream. Definitely just a dream. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I w-want to luh-look u-under the puh-puh-porch,” Fred insisted, his face going red under his mop of brown hair as he spat out the last word. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What do you want? Its autograph?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The cluh-cluh-clown k-killed O-Oscar.” There was a strange light in Fred’s eyes, an unforgiving hardness. “I want to k-k-kill it.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jesus Christ, Freddie,” said FP warily. “How are you going to do that?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Muh-my d-d-dad’s got a pih-pih-pistol,” Fred explained. “H-he duh-doesn’t k-know I k-know he h-has it buh-but I d-do. I kn-know where he k-keeps it.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>FP absorbed this new information with some shock. Fred had said as much about killing the clown on the day they’d seen the photo… but that had been kid talk, FP had thought, not the kind of thing that necessitated your dad’s gun. Only now the question didn’t seem to be whether or not Fred would kill the clown, but when. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“This is crazy talk, Freddie. You wouldn’t really kill someone, and I wouldn’t let you.” FP searched Fred’s face desperately for the person he knew - Fred the pacifist, Fred who could talk the bigger kids out of taking over the vacant lot where they played baseball without ever using his fists, but all he could see was that stony anger swimming under his handsome face. He swallowed and put his foot down. “I’m not gonna shoot a person and that’s final. Playing guns down in the Barrens with an air rifle is one thing, but this is different. You’re my best friend, and I’m not gonna let you shoot someone either.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ih-It’s n-n-not a puh-person,” Fred answered. “It’s a muh-muh-muh- monster. And it w-won’t s-stop- un-until-” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I made some fresh lemonade!” Mrs. Jones was calling to them from the top of the porch. FP turned to smile and wave at her, and then turned back to Fred, his face falling immediately. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Freddie-” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Luh-listen t-to me,” Fred said, and FP fell obediently silent. “Wuh-we k-know the c-c-clown is cuh-connected tuh-to the k-kids getting kuh-killed. A-And a-all the k-kids who’ve g-gone missing, I t-think. If we d-don’t s-stop it, it’ll j-just k-keep on kuh-killing.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, what if the bullet doesn’t stop it, Freddie?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“W-We’ll t-t-think of suh-something else.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“In case you’ve forgotten, Freddie, I’m not exactly the big thinker of the group. And what are we gonna do if you think of some great plan and have to stutter it out to me, huh?” FP cracked a weak smile, reassured by his bleak humor. “We’re gonna tell it, ‘hold on, just let him get his sentence out before you rip our heads off like in that werewolf movie?’” He put his British accent back on, addressing an imaginary monster. “Hold that thought gov’ner, we’re just going to nip off to the library to figure out ‘ow to kill ya. Back in a ‘mo.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Impossibly, Fred was smiling. “Yuh-you w-wanted muh-me t-to look at t-the puh-picture. N-Now I w-want yuh-you t-to luh-look at t-the h-house.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s not the same,” said FP, knowing in his heart that he was only stalling for time. He was relenting a little and Fred could tell. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Tuh-tit for t-tat.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You haven’t got any tits,” said FP, and they both broke up laughing. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“T-Tomorrow muh-morning,” Fred said, and FP sighed. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay. Tomorrow.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They walked up the driveway towards FP’s porch. Mrs. Jones had set out a plate of egg-salad sandwiches and a pitcher of lemonade, which she poured into two red plastic glasses. To each one she added a sprig of real mint. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You boys looked like you were having a serious discussion out there,” Linda Jones said. She had a paperback book with a flowery cover resting open across her lap. She looked at her son and his friend expectantly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, nothing,” said FP easily, helping himself to a quarter of sandwich from the heaping plate. “This asshole thinks the Red Sox are gonna win the World Series.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Muh-my d-dad and I th-think they have a s-shot at th-third,” Fred explained, and sipped from the red cup. He smiled warmly at FP’s mother, the smile that always won adults over when paired with his big brown eyes. “Th-this is r-really g-good, Mrs. Jones,” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The day the Sox win the series is the day you stop stuttering, mush brain,” said FP, and his mother nearly dropped her glass of lemonade in shock. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“FP!” she shrieked, swatting him on the arm for his rudeness, but Fred and FP had both broken up into gales of laughter. When they stopped briefly and locked eyes it made them laugh longer and harder, and FP flopped down on his back and rolled around on the porch. Linda watched them both with a mystified love bordering on trepidation, and an awful thought grew to maturity in her mind. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I don’t understand them, </span>
  </em>
  <span>she thought. It was an apprehension she had been having more and more often the older her son got, and had grown now to a frightening depth and potency. </span>
  <em>
    <span>I don’t know who they are anymore, where they go or what they do or what they talk about, I don’t understand them at all, what they’re becoming, and sometimes they’re so wild that they scare me a little. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>She watched them roll around on the porch for a bit before composing themselves and diving into the egg salad sandwiches. They were still the same kids she’d always known… but sometimes she looked at FP and felt with a shudder of fear that he had gone somewhere too far for her maternal protection to follow. Sometimes she looked across the dinner table at him and saw a little stranger looking back at her with her own eyes. And the Andrews boy was different - older and taller and distant somehow, distant in a way that only FP could reach him. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I worry,</span>
  </em>
  <span> she thought, as Fred and FP ate their lunch on the porch in the warm June sunshine. They seemed to be every age to her at that moment: childlike and yet almost grown, enveloped in their own preadolescent world. </span>
  <em>
    <span>I really do worry about them. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I worry a lot. </span>
  </em>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. the house on neibolt street</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p></p><blockquote>
  <p><em> "Richie suddenly became sure that they were invulnerable... they would live forever and ever. Well... perhaps not </em> they <em> , but Bill would. Bill had no idea of how strong he was, how somehow sure and perfect." - Stephen King, It.  </em></p>
</blockquote><p>Fred took the pistol from the top shelf of Artie Andrews’ closet, where it was nestled in a shoebox from Freese’s department store with a half-empty package of handkerchiefs and his parents’ wedding album. He had known it was there for years, but had only seen his father handle it once that he could remember: the day he had sat his eldest on the back stoop and explained the danger the weapon carried, that it was not to be played with or handled lightly. </p><p>But he was not thinking about his father’s lessons in firearm safety as he snuck into Artie’s downstairs study, first to retrieve the key to the bottom right drawer of his mahogany roll-top desk, and then to remove the box of bullets that was nestled at the very back of this drawer and slip it in his pocket. A simple phrase floated unbidden into his head as he stored these stolen things in the duffel bag he used for cub scout trips and sleepovers, a slice of education he attributed not to his father but his mother: <em> He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.  </em></p><p>It was a speech-exercise of the kind his therapists would later prescribe, though his mother had suggested he try reciting the phrase two years ago when Fred’s stutter had been little more than a minor hindrance compared to what it had become since Oscar’s death. He could not say the full phrase without stuttering, but he thought on the day he did, the day he was able to go up to his mother and deliver it, that phrase would be the thing to break the spell that had been cast over his parents since Oscar had been murdered. </p><p>Fred would not have admitted such a thing to anyone - he barely dared admit it to himself - but he thought that if he were able to say that simple phrase to his mother her face would light up like it used to, in a smile so warm and so loving that he would forget the long cold months where she had hated him. No, she would smile warmly at him again, like she used to, and his father would come in from the garage and beam and throw his arms around him, and call him Freddie, and ask him if he wanted to play catch or sit on the couch and watch TV after dinner, as a family. That phrase, uttered successfully, would make his parents love him again. </p><p>Fred had been trying to make it through that phrase for two years - he often got stumped on the first <em> th </em> sound, and when he made it through there was always the agonizing trap of the <em> f </em> , not to mention the <em> p </em> that regularly gave him so much trouble. The elusiveness of the pronunciation forced him to fixate on those fourteen words; he found himself obsessively thinking the phrase when he walked home from school or when he biked, matching the words to the rhythm of his pumping legs like a wizard’s incantation that could allow him to bike harder and faster - but he could not say it aloud. The night before he intended to avenge his brother’s murder with his father’s gun, he had lain awake in bed and thought <em> he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts </em> in an interminable rotation until he passed out. </p><p>“Can I see it?” FP asked as they were walking their bikes up Kansas street the next morning. He was torn between horror at the presence of the gun and bonafide curiosity, and curiosity was winning out. Fred shook his head. </p><p>“N-Not here.” It was ten in the morning but it was already hot enough to be mid-day, the sky a threatening overcast that allowed only dull streams of light to escape from behind a blanket of cloud. The heat rose up from the ground and wrapped around them like a heavy curtain. “Suh-someone might s-see. But look w-what else I b-brought.” </p><p>He shuffled in his bag and retrieved a Bullseye hunting slingshot, the Y made of shiny aluminum and the cup a small square of real leather. </p><p>“Shit,” said FP loudly when Fred passed it to him. “Forget the gun. You got a guy who could hit the side of a barn in there too?” </p><p>Fred began to laugh, and FP liked the sound of it: bright and warm in the deserted street. “Sh-shut up, n-numbnuts,” Fred said. “It’s just in cuh-case.” </p><p>The slingshot had been a gift from Artie for Fred’s last birthday, and both boys had tried it out exhaustively in the Andrews backyard, lining up tin cans on the back fence and hitting everything but the targets. Fred was the best pitcher in town when they played baseball, but something about drawing back the Bullseye’s thick elastic shot his aim to hell, and in all the time they’d been out there he’d only hit one: a Campbell's soup can that came back with a hole the size of a penny through it. </p><p>“You practiced with it any more?” FP asked. Fred hesitated a moment before replying. </p><p>“Y-Yeah, a luh-little.” In truth, he had given up trying to hit the cans on the backyard fence and paged through the instruction manual while listening to a record. He <em> had </em> managed to drill a paper target he’d set up on an elm tree in Riverdale Park - and had even scraped a bullseye after a few dozen tries, but knew privately that he’d probably never be very good at it. The slingshot was exactly what he’d told FP - a last resort, in the case in some unimaginable world Artie’s pistol didn’t do the job he had planned. </p><p>FP rested his bike against a telephone pole and stretched the Bullseye’s leather cup back to its full length. When he let go the elastic whipped him hard in the thumb, and he let out a little yelp. He and Fred looked worriedly at each other and then broke up laughing. </p><p>“Should’ve just brought a baseball, Freddie,” FP said loyally, handing it back. “Man, you could drill that sucker between the eyes if we did. You’re a better pitcher than anyone. Forget those fucking rich bastards from Upper Broadway.” </p><p>Fred grinned obligingly. “T-Thanks.” </p><p>“Yeah, well, while you were cranking your pickle, I brought a solution to all our problems. Check this out.” </p><p>FP pulled a bright yellow container out of the pocket of his shorts. On the tin was a bright orange starburst with a cartoon of a man honking on a handkerchief, and above it bubbly red letters spelled out <em>AACHOOO! </em></p><p><strong>DR WACKY’S SNEEZING POWDER</strong>, said the side of the tin. <strong>IT’S A LAFF RIOT! </strong></p><p>The two of them stared at each other for a moment and then broke up into hysterical gales of laughter. </p><p>“They won’t muh-muh-mess with us,” said Fred, tears rolling down his tanned cheeks, and collapsed into FP’s arms, laughing helplessly into his shirt. FP staggered a little under his weight, his giggles beginning to peter off nervously. Finally, Fred drew himself upright, a flicker of fear settling in behind the smile in his eyes. There was a joke on the tip of FP’s tongue - something about how the sneezing powder would be a better chance than Fred trying to aim the slingshot - but for some reason, the words wouldn’t form. </p><p>Fred’s face hardened in a way FP had come to recognize, and he took a deep breath, the light from the gathering clouds reflecting the gold in his eyes. With a sinking heart, FP realized the time for jokes was over. Fred squeezed FP’s shoulders, holding him steady so they were face to face. </p><p>“N-Now listen. W-We’re g-gonna s-stash your buh-bike d-down in the Barrens w-where I keep it w-when we puh-play. Y-You ride d-double b-behind me, in cuh-case w-we have to g-get away quick.” </p><p>FP nodded without argument. Fred was much stronger and the silver bike was faster. “You got it, Freddie. And then what’s the plan? We just stand outside Neibolt Street and holler trick or treat ‘till it comes out?” </p><p>“We b-blow its f-f-fucking h-head off,” said Fred. “That’s the p-plan.” </p><p>FP gulped and said no more about it. They resumed their side-by-side pilgrimage down Kansas street, pushing their bikes by the handlebars. As they passed the Tracker Brothers Trucking Depot faint shouts issued down from the ballfield, but Fred’s brow was creased in a firm line, and he didn’t seem to hear them. When they reached the small bridge where Marty Mantle had joyfully carved his first initial in Hal Cooper’s stomach, they stashed FP’s bike beneath the supports and camouflaged it with leaves and pine branches. Fred sat down in the shade, his arms around his knees, and FP followed suit. </p><p>FP watched as Fred opened his bag and very seriously drew out Artie Andrews’ pistol. </p><p>“Christ,” he said loudly. He would have made another joke, except there was nothing very funny about this gun at all. An unexpected shiver passed through him at the sight of it, his stomach clenching with fright. There was something very ugly and permanent about the thing, and it looked horribly out of place in his friend’s small, familiar hands, a dark blotch in the dusty green shade provided by the bridge pilings. </p><p>“B-Be c-careful,” Fred said, and handed him the gun. </p><p>“Is it loaded?” </p><p>“N-Not yet.” Fred patted the pocket of his shorts. “I guh-got some b-bullets f-from my d-dad’s d-desk. B-But be cuh-careful anyways.” </p><p>FP held it for a moment, hoping he looked like he knew what he was looking at, and then handed it back to his friend. He felt a shiver of relief as Fred took it. There was something ominously <em> real </em>about that gun, something darkly knowing and alive. It was a warm, muggy day, but the grip had been cold in his hands. It relieved him too when Fred put it down carefully on a patch of dirt to his side. He didn’t like the gun being so close to Fred - it made an urge roar up in him to throw it down into the Barrens to disappear. </p><p>They sat side-by-side in the slats of shade provided by the bridge, and when Fred crossed his legs his left knee knocked into FP’s thigh. He didn’t move it, and FP was very aware of the warmth feeding into his leg from Fred’s skin, how the little hairs on his friend’s knee tickled faintly as the overcast sky grew heavy with heat, and somewhere far below them in the green of the Barrens, Sweetwater river pulsed past the side of their dam in its lush green cradle of foliage. </p><p>Had they not been headed off on a suicide mission it might have been a really nice day to just sit here in the shade with his friend, sit and be aware of him, his breathing and the way the sunlight trickled through his brown hair, his hands steadfast and sure as they pulled a jacket out of the bag and tucked the bag itself under a nearby rock. </p><p>Yes, if Fred hadn’t had this crazy idea about going to look under the porch they could sit here, and shoot the breeze a little, and get some good chucks off down here in the shade. He could make Fred laugh, he knew that much, and every time he did that it felt like a prize, like something you could get hooked on if you weren’t careful. And he thought it would be a good feeling to sit here with Fred and make him laugh, one of the best. </p><p>This was a feeling he’d tried to conjure up with all his might for Alice Smith in the air-conditioned balcony of the Aladdin last week. He was aware of her, but very dimly, had had to push his brain to take in her hand lying on the armrest between them and the long blonde hair that picked up the projector glow, but neither turned up any more feeling in him than something you knew was supposed to be pretty, like a good-looking maple tree in the fall. She’d slipped into the dark for him: he knew she was there by his side, taking up space and screaming at all the scary bits, but he’d felt no urge to comfort her, to let her hide her soft little face in his chest like a big Macho man in a comic. </p><p>She was pretty alright, for a girl, and he’d felt kind of good about sitting next to her - he knew no other boy would be caught dead doing that unless they wanted people to assume they’d done some fooling around type stuff - and hell maybe he did want people to think about that, just to blot out the alternative - so he had felt faintly heroic about planting his ass next to her on the buttery popcorn-smeared chair of the Aladdin theatre. He thought she’d been grateful, though not necessarily falling at his feet to thank him or anything. And that was all right for FP Jones - that suited him just fine. </p><p>But Fred - Fred made his chest feel like it was cleaving open sometimes, and it wasn’t right so he didn’t talk about it, but it was there all the same. He didn’t talk about it because it brought back memories of that other thing that had happened earlier this year, the Awful Thing that even FP couldn’t make seem particularly funny. The Awful Thing had happened by the Paul Bunyan statue at the city center, but it had started in the arcade, and that was the part that FP really didn’t want to think about anymore. </p><p>So he didn’t. </p><p>Fred put on the jacket and slid his father’s gun into the inside pocket. He stuffed the Bullseye in the other pocket and patted the thigh where the bullets were kept. FP waited for him to stand up and tell him they were moving out, but Fred didn’t, at least not right away. He sat there for another second, the heavy sunlight running its orange fingers through his hair, tiredness carving dark hollows under his brown eyes. </p><p>FP looked up at the sky above the trees and remembered the sight of a sky full of balloons, scattered like swollen droplets of blood across a fairytale blue, blotting out the light the way the clouds were blotting out the sun now, above their heads. He remembered that, but that had come later, after the Really Awful Thing had already happened. </p><p>That was in the arcade, of course. When the boy with the blonde hair and green eyes had come up to him and said - </p><hr/><p>“Can I join?” </p><p>FP looked up. The boy who had materialized beside the Street Fighter cabinet was tall - taller than Fred and maybe older, thirteen already or even in high school. He had curly blonde hair and the greenest eyes FP had ever seen. They shone out of his face like emeralds, the clear, bright color perceptible even in the arcade’s neon-studded darkness. </p><p>“Yeah, if you wanna lose,” FP replied confidently. It was the middle of the afternoon, and a dull streak of sunlight shone under the arcade door, tapering out on the carpet a few steps from FP’s feet. He was stationed at his usual game cabinet, the same square of floor that he had been wearing thin in afternoons and weekends since Christmas break. The boy grinned and took his place nonchalantly at FP’s elbow. FP watched his hand wrap around the joystick, the other resting lightly on the second set of buttons. His hands were tanned, and his fingers were very long. </p><p>“You’re on,” said the boy in a tough voice. FP obligingly shoved a token into the slot on the machine and hit the button for a new game. If it had been Fred or Hiram he would have dickered customarily about whose tokens they were using, but it didn’t cross his mind today to ask the stranger to pay. He glanced up at the older boy, and they exchanged a smile when their eyes met. The game’s music began, adding to the general din in the front of the arcade, and a jolt of adrenaline rushed through FP’s veins. Later - twenty-seven years later to be exact - he would hear this same theme muffled and distorted in his nightmares. </p><p>ROUND ONE splashed across the screen in blood-red letters. Opponents stood shoulder to shoulder at the game cabinet, and the boy’s elbow tapped FP’s arm every so often as they played. He was over-aware of these touches, cataloging them privately with a multitude of innocuous details that inexplicably stood out to him in infrared color: the freckles on the back of the boy’s hand, the smear of white sunscreen on his ear, the stiff corduroy collar of his jacket that was turned up against his neck. His nearness was such that he could almost feel the heat from his body. FP’s pulse was running oddly quick in his neck, but it wasn’t uncomfortable; a buoyant sense of happiness and security had replaced his apprehension. He found his thoughts turning in a strangely sentimental way to how pleasant it was to have someone to play with, how fond he was of the game, and how satisfying it would be to win. </p><p>It was dark in the arcade, and his hearing and smell were heightened in the absence of sight: he was aware of the rustling of the boy’s clothing, the smell of his sweat, and the warmth of his skin. He barely noticed himself winning, simultaneously intent on the screen and the stiff blonde hairs on his neighbor’s knuckles. </p><p>“You’re fucking good,” the boy said when FP had finally dealt the winning kick to his opponent. There was warmth and respect in his face. He wasn’t a sore loser - he was smiling, the same rakish grin as before. FP grinned in return and slapped him a high five, something he’d do with anyone - only this was different somehow, their palms sliding together with an eerie intimacy that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. His mouth was suddenly dry. </p><p>“I gotta go,” said the blond boy, and turned to melt back into the darkness. FP’s heart kicked up into his throat, intoxicated by that fleeting comfortable happiness. </p><p>“Hey- um-” </p><p>Those green eyes fixed on him again, cutting sharply through to his heart. There was a sense of being laid bare in the path of those eyes, but FP was momentarily too happy to be prudent. </p><p>“Do you want to go again?” He held up his last arcade token, the metal warm from the pocket of his shorts. “Play some more? Or-” </p><p>Something had closed off in the older boy’s expression. He felt his grip loosening on the token, his hands slick and hot. Blood swelled in his cheeks, and FP was waylaid by a deeply uncharacteristic emotion - shame. He caught himself backpedaling. </p><p>“Only - Only if you want.” </p><p>“No thanks,” said the boy cooly. The warmth was gone from him: his eyes skimmed over FP with an impassiveness that bordered on disgust. When he dealt the killing blow it was controlled and unequivocal. “I’m not a <em> fag.”  </em></p><p>The word hit him like a bucket of cold water in the face. FP’s stomach dropped into his bowels as though it had fallen three stories, panic and horror sprinting into his brain. In his consternation he hadn’t noticed the three dark shadows approaching from behind him, but he noticed them now - one of them grabbed him roughly by the shoulders and shoved him hard with both hands. FP’s stomach hit the Street Fighter controls hard enough to leave a bruise. </p><p>“What’s going on here?” Marty Mantle was flanked by two of his usual entourage - Mike Minetta and another heavyset farm kid named Marcus Mason, who FP suspected he kept around because he made Marty look comparatively Einstein-like. Mike made a show of cracking his knuckles while Marty sized FP up. Small pinpricks of interest glittered in his reptile eyes, but his motions indicated boredom and nonchalance. He clearly hadn’t overheard this last, or FP would be in for more of a beating. Marty’s eyes slid from FP to the blond boy, who took care of this oversight in an instant, shooting FP a look of unmitigated disgust. </p><p>“Marty, you didn’t tell me this town was overrun with little queers.” </p><p>The panic built from a flare into a wildfire. FP stared uselessly at the scene before him, his eyes feeling like they were popping out of his head. There was nothing to deny. The evidence of what they’d done - even if it had been nothing more than play a video game - was vivid as day. He felt as guilty as a man who had been caught covered in blood at the scene of a crime. The guilt was all over him. He might as well have worn a flashing sign. </p><p>It took a second to land. Marty had a cigarette halfway to his lips, (NO SMOKING! shouted a cheerful yellow sign over the entrance) and his silver lighter had just emerged from his pocket. He stared at FP as he lowered his hand, his mouth opening a slit so that the cigarette clung precariously to his scabby lower lip. The disgust and understanding hardened his face into something truly hideous. </p><p>“The hell? You hitting on my fucking cousin, freak?” </p><p>FP started backing up, his stomach in knots. There was fear unlike anything he’d ever experienced running cold through his veins, and the possibility of Marty kicking his head in was for once the absolute least of his worries. The arcade’s protective bubble had burst, and he felt a sick, horrifying loss of control. For a moment his vision went white, and he truly thought he was going to faint. Then he whirled around and ran for the door just before Marty lunged at him, the collar of his Hawaiian shirt passing less than a quarter-inch from the older boy’s grasping fingertips. </p><p>Marty closed his hand on empty air and screamed. “GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE BEFORE I KILL YOU, FAGGOT!” </p><p>The whole arcade had gone silent. The name slammed into FP’s retreating back like a load of iron, and he tripped over the door frame, managed to catch himself on one foot, and took off sprinting in reckless leaps down the road. He was gasping in hitching, throat-scraping sobs as he ran, and his heart slammed wildly into his ribs, the street blurring before his eyes until he was running blindly, slamming through bodies and passing the colorful blurs of shops and cars without caring if he was run down. </p><p>Sure, Marty had called him that before, and Fred had been on the receiving end of names like that too - the week before school let out Marty and Darryl had turned Fred’s pencil case upside down in the hall and called him a pansy for wearing a silk baseball jacket - only this was different. This was different because they’d all seen him<em> looking </em> at him. Thinking of how he had looked at the blond boy - <em> smiled </em> at him - rewarded him with a swoop of the loose and desperate nausea that accompanied only the worst of stomach flus. When it was Fred it had been a name hurled without any proof, but this - this he had begged for, asking him to play, looking at his hands, his guilt written clear as day all over his face - this was real. He wouldn’t have felt more exposed if Marty had yanked down his shorts and underwear and laughed at the size of his wang. </p><p>He could feel eyes turning to him as he ran, and the thought of how far that name might reach made him run faster, running as though he could somehow outpace it, escape its dreadful attachment and run back to a time before it had happened. Suppose he went home and his mother said <em> no, you can’t come in here, I don’t serve dinner to little fags? </em> The terror was a lead weight in his stomach - he could taste the iron tang of panic in his mouth and on his tongue. It had been right <em> there, </em> right in front of their faces. They had all <em> seen </em> - </p><p>He ran as fast and as far as he could, his chest tightening with every step, and finally collapsed onto the bench in front of the city center in a fit of wrenching sobs. He tore his glasses off his face - they were blurry and wet from crying - covered his face with his hands, and wept in terror until his throat was ragged and felt closed as tightly as a pin. The skin of his face felt like a swollen burn, hot and tight against his palms. </p><p>That was when he must have fallen asleep. Fallen asleep or passed out, because the next thing he knew FP was looking up for a second and Paul Bunyan’s giant face was inches from his own. </p><p>The plastic Paul Bunyan statue - which had been unveiled in May of 1988, and had famously split Riverdale’s population on whether a twenty-foot high plastic lumberjack would be a lovely local landmark or a garish eyesore - had stepped down from the six-foot-high pedestal on which it had been placed by the civic committee. Now it stood facing FP Jones on the grass, bending forward at the waist so that Paul was eye-to-eye with the crying boy on the bench. His face was enormous - it filled FPs entire field of vision, blotting out the blue sky and the bandstand behind it. FP shoved his glasses back on in a panic. </p><p>The lumberjack curled his plastic lips in a smile - only they weren’t quite plastic anymore. FP could see as his eyes refocused that Paul’s smoothly pleasant features had morphed into something garishly animal. His skin was leathery and wrinkled, like a phonebook left out in the rain. Scaly red skin rimmed his cavernous nostrils, each bearing gristles of thick hair. His enormous eyes were yellow and bloodshot, his two canine teeth pointed like fangs, and his splendidly full and dark beard had become a forest of clotted snarls. His mouth was stretched in a wide and leering grin to reveal gray teeth from between which wafted a thick smell of rotten meat. </p><p>“I know your secret, FP,” he rumbled, and the voice seemed to boom out of the earth as though from God himself. A foul rush of air from between his giant’s lips flattened FP’s hair to his skull and made his shirt flap open. He shrank back against the bench, pinned by the stench of the apparition in front of him. </p><p>The plastic axe that Paul Bunyan carried was no longer hoisted jauntily over his shoulder - and it was no longer plastic, either. He had been leaning on it as he bent down, and the head of the axe had crushed a large gulley in the pavement before the bench. As Paul yanked it up over his head, the sharpened metal glinted in the bright May sunshine. </p><p>“I know your dirty secret!” Paul boomed, and lifted the axe heavenward. </p><p>FP watched this without making a move to run. He was frozen to the bench - frozen and yet less afraid now than he had been in the arcade, even as the giant’s face loomed above him with eyes the size of moon craters. This was a dream, after all, some hallucination brought on by guilt, and any moment he would wake up. Wake up and have to contend with the awful thing that had happened in the arcade, yes - but at least wake up without a possessed Paul Bunyan holding an axe above his head. </p><p>“You’ll wake up in hell, faggot!” the giant boomed, and FP, recognizing at the last millisecond the danger he was in, slid sideways off the bench and landed in the gravel as the axe pitched downward with a whistling, sucking noise. He opened his mouth to scream as the head of the axe pierced the bench, but the only sound that rang out across the park was a behemoth <em> crunch. </em> The wood shattered into a thousand glinting shards, the innards of the bench scattering about the grass. The wood inside the paint was as white and pale as a green branch bent from a healthy tree. </p><p>His mouth gaping open, wheezing like Hiram in the midst of an asthma attack, FP rolled over onto his stomach and tried to scramble to his feet. His dark hair fell in his eyes, and in his fragmented, half upside-down vision he watched a line of brightly colored cars pass by on Canal Street, none of them pausing to note the young boy about to be slaughtered in the city park. A yellow van turned on its blinker, waiting patiently for the chance to make a left turn onto Center Street. The driver’s bare arm dangled casually out of the van’s open window. </p><p>FP’s sneakers finally found purchase on the grass, and he scrambled to his feet and sprinted as fast as he could towards the road. Paul tore the axe up from the pavement and began to chase him, each stride of his enormous black boots hitting the grass with the weight of a small earthquake. He swung the axe wildly as he gained on FP’s heels, tearing furrows into the green grass of the city center lawn. FP pitched this way and that with none of Harry Clayton’s athletic fervor, almost tripping over his untied laces as he took huge, leaping strides on his skinny, awkward legs. The axe shattered the roof of the city gazebo and clipped a branch off a nearby oak, sending a cloud of birds into the sky with a deafening chorus of avian cries. </p><p>The earth shook as the axe smashed into the fresh sod an inch from FP’s retreating back, and he pitched forward onto his hands and knees with a cry. His glasses flew off and landed a few feet from his head, his hands stinging as they bore the unforgiving weight of his upper body onto the grass. He flopped helplessly onto his side like a captured trout, his denim-clad legs kicking uselessly up into the air. Far above him, twenty feet up in the sky, Paul Bunyan raised his glittering axe. The shadow thrown from his enormous body landed across FP so that he was swallowed by a dense, cool blackness. The sun was behind him, and Paul’s head fit neatly over the yellow orb in the sky like an eclipse. </p><p>FP’s voice came back to him at last, but it wasn’t a scream: in the black puddle of the giant’s shadow he burst into helpless sobbing laughter, the kind that caught you ten flavors of hell if you did it in class, or worse, in church. The kind that passed like an illness between you and your friends in a quiet room. Paul opened his gaping mouth and echoed him, a booming laugh that swept across the grass field like a high wind. His teeth were grey and rotten, and the cavernous black space behind them seemed dark and luridly deep. </p><p>The axe whistled down, and FP curled up in a tight ball, throwing his arms over his face. Now would be the prime part of the dream to wake up from, moments before the axe landed - but he felt the metal connect with the ground all the same, the blade embedded itself in the city center lawn only inches from his skull. The impact was such that his small body jolted up and was briefly airborne, his teeth clattering together like marbles as he smashed back into the ground. </p><p>Now more sobbing than laughing, FP curled himself smaller still, his arms over his head as the coolness of the shadow enveloped him, the massive axe rising up from the tender ground with another jolt. He could taste blood in his mouth where he had bitten down on his tongue and his sobs became futile whimpers, his eyes screwed tightly shut as he waited for the apparition to cleave him neatly in two. </p><p>The giant laughed longer and harder, laughter that seemed to echo out everywhere in the town, laughter they ought to hear clear back to the arcade and that would probably empty out the four-o-clock movie at the Aladdin. The head of the axe - roughly the size of a large boat - crushed the earth next to his head. The wooden axe handle creaked, and FP realized the giant was leaning on it, using it to bear his enormous weight so he could lean back down over his victim. </p><p>He rolled helplessly onto his back, and Paul Bunyan leaned down towards him at the same moment so that the sun disappeared completely behind his bulk and an overpowering stench of death hit him full in the face. The jovial giant’s grin was gone, and the red lips were stretched into a sickly delighted smirk under the tangles of beard. The billboard-sized face contorted with hatred, so wild now that the only recognizable features that aligned it with the statue at all were the bright red checkered shirt and denim overalls. </p><p>FP’s mother was firmly in the camp that saw Paul Bunyan as an eyesore - they had gone together to the unveiling, and he remembered her engaged in conversation with the woman beside her about the strongly worded letter they would like to send to the mayor. FP, meanwhile, had thought it was pretty great, and had cheered heartily when the ribbon was cut, a day that had been so full of hoopla it was almost like a fourth of July parade. </p><p>“But you like looking at boys, don’t you FP?” Paul Bunyan boomed, and FP, mercifully, passed out. The back of his head hit the green lawn of the city center with a hard<em> thud </em> that he didn’t feel. </p><p>When he woke the sun had shifted slightly in the sky, and darts of white-gold light were punching him full in the eyes. FP rolled his head to the right and almost had a convulsion: Paul Bunyan was back on his pedestal, as stiff and as plastic as ever, smiling his handsome, jovial hero’s grin out over the lawn. His enormous axe rested lightly on his shoulder as though it had never moved. </p><p>A rush of bile shot up the back of FP’s throat, and he gagged. His hand rummaged in the grass and dirt by his head for his glasses, which he eventually came up with, thankfully unharmed. FP shoved them back onto his face - they were dirty, the lenses covered with dirt smudges and fingerprints - and stared at the park he’d been chased through. </p><p>The bench that had been shattered by the giant’s axe was completely undamaged. The gazebo sat quiet and tidy under the healthy oak tree. Where massive furrows had been torn into the lawn by the blade of the axe, there was now only smooth green grass. No axe-slash parted the concrete in front of the bench, no enormous boot had left its crushing imprint on the ground. Only a scuff of gravel where FP had slid sideways off the bench substantiated the events of the past half-hour. </p><p>FP climbed gingerly to his feet - he had torn the knee of his jeans open - and stood waiting for the statue to move. When nothing happened he took a tentative step backward, and turned and walked a few paces more, waiting for the ground to shake with Paul Bunyan’s approaching footsteps, or the whistle of the axe blade headed directly for his head. Nothing came. At the edge of the road where the cars still passed in leisurely rows, he turned and looked back, and gasped. </p><p>Once again a dark shape was blotting out the sun - but what he was looking at was no statue. Instead it was a solid wall of red balloons, more balloons than FP had ever seen in one place in his life, clustered in a great inverted triangle above the trees. They rose high above the park and the bandstand, a garish swell of crimson absurdity. FP’s head tipped involuntarily back to take in their number, his eyes widening comically behind his glasses. Behind him on Canal street, cars and trucks continued their heedless travel through the downtown. </p><p>FP turned, his eyes screwed shut, his breath catching quick in his throat, and clenched his hands into trembling, sweaty fists. When he turned back they were gone. The park was empty and silent, the sky a clear and cloudless blue. The sun shone with springtime freshness above the gazebo, an unconcerned golden circle like the sun a child would draw with crayon. Paul Bunyan had his back to him, but he hadn’t moved. </p><p>“Shit,” said FP weakly. He touched his forehead, and his fingers came away drenched with sweat. This made him laugh weakly - but it wasn’t very funny, and it turned into a sob once it was out of his mouth. He stood there for a moment more, blood trickling from his busted knee, his face wet and still tight with tears that had half-dried, and then he turned and began to walk home. </p><p>He could have walked back across the park to get to the main road, but he decided not to. He had no interest in passing in front of the pedestal where Paul Bunyan’s plastic eyes could see him. Instead he took the long way around, cutting behind the library and down Costello avenue, where a squat cinderblock row of warehouses sprouted from a field of scrubby weeds. He abandoned his bike where it was outside the arcade, expecting he’d go back for it later, or send Fred or a sane adult to retrieve it. </p><p>Already the attack was taking on the quality of a dream, replaced by the more horrifying memory of what had happened in the arcade, and by that evening he had nearly forgotten it. He could have volunteered the story when Fred had asked them as a group, only it would have been useless, because, after all, he had dreamed the whole thing. You only had to look at the unbroken gazebo and the bench across from the statue to see that. (This was another great ability of FP’s: sometimes his bullshit was so plausible he even convinced himself.)</p><p>And if there was a baseless but more devastating terror that kept him from disclosing what had become invariably twinned in his mind with the word Marty had flung at him in the arcade, so be it. He had no intention of telling the others what Marty had said to him, and continued to allow them to believe Marty’s hatred of him stemmed simply from those days in class when he had mocked his boots or haircut. The thing he was afraid of the most, of course, was that Fred would not love him anymore. That, he thought, was more frightening than Marty Mantle and even statues that came to life. </p><p>That, FP thought, would be more than he could bear. </p><hr/><p>As always, FP closed a death grip around Fred’s middle as the enormous silver bike picked up speed. At first it seesawed dizzily from side to side, sagging so violently to the right at one point that FP, whose eyes were screwed tightly shut, thought they might have been lying horizontally. He could hear the metallic firing sounds of the baseball cards clothespinned to the wheels, the gravel scratching under the tires and the protesting creaking and scraping of the rusted metal frame. Fred’s back rose up slightly against FP’s grip as he stood on the pedals, and the bike began to roll more smoothly as the wheels turned faster and faster. </p><p>For one lovely moment they were going quite steadily and straight - and then the bike was rolling more swiftly, the rush of air against FP’s temples coalescing into a eye-watering wind, and they flew along Kansas street at an angle, the trees and houses blurring into a meaningless streak of color. They shot over a curb, crossing onto a side street and flying diagonally across the road and through a busy intersection. </p><p>FP, despite his initial terror, began to laugh. He opened his eyes to watch the houses blurring past them, his hands locked tight against each other under Fred’s ribcage. “Ride it, Freddie!” he screamed, and Fred stood obediently up on the pedals and pushed hard. The driver of a red pickup truck leaned on the horn and gave them a one-finger salute through the open window, which FP joyfully returned. Fred laughed, and the sound was like music. </p><p>They flew through the intersection and past the cleanly maintained houses of West Broadway. FP stared at the back of his friend’s neck, the few rays of sun glinting on the handlebars and the broad shifting muscles of Fred’s back, and felt a swell of love and invulnerability so strong that it dazzled him. Now that they were moving, it never occurred to him to worry about crashing or being hit. He had never felt so safe and sure as he did with his arms around Fred’s middle, even with the cold black shape of the pistol in Fred’s jacket pocket and Neibolt Street waiting for them somewhere at the end of this journey. He could feel Fred’s heart beating beneath his interlaced hands, and the thrum was as soothing as a lullaby. </p><p>Now they were on Route Two, barrelling down the gravel side of the road as fast as a car. The ground was rough and uneven, but the bike’s tires bore them effortlessly as Fred pumped his legs hard. Finally they came to the Neibolt Street Church school, a red brick building with a weather-beaten bell tower and a peeling painted sign. Fred turned right and they raced past the chain-link fence separating the schoolyard from the road, so close that FP could have reached out and skimmed his hand along the metal. They rode a little ways down the crumbling concrete of Neibolt street, headed towards the sound of passing trains. Fred coasted to the curb and set his foot down, and the rushing love and confidence that had soared in FP’s heart rose up all at once before the terror set back in. He finally released Fred’s middle, placing his hands anxiously on either side of the metal package carrier. </p><p>They looked up and down Neibolt Street, which was utterly deserted. They could hear cars rolling down Route Two, but they couldn’t see them. The sun was still dwarfed by clouds, the summer air heavy and humid. </p><p>“Walk from here,” said Fred, and they did, the silver bike rolling between them. At the end of the street, near where the sidewalk stopped, was the crumbling old Cape Cod where Hiram had come face-to-face with the leper. Behind them, a scraggly wire fence separated the road from a vacant lot dotted with the rusted-out hulks of decaying cars. </p><p>There was something undeniably <em> wrong </em>about the place. The broken windows of 29 Neibolt Street seemed to gloat with the concealment of some awful secret, a smug malevolence radiating from its boarded shutters and crumbling walls. A tall patch of sunflowers bobbed ominously on long, sickly stems by the fence, the browning leaves jutting out from the stalks like thorns. Their heads nodded lazily in the humidity, the centers browning and gnarled. The petals had been eaten away by some insect until only tatters remained. </p><p>“Y-You ruh-ready?” Fred asked. </p><p>FP stood on the edge of one foot, gnawing his lower lip. “Actually, I thought I’d go on up and see if any of those West Broadway kids needs a third baseman.” </p><p>“C-C-Cut the cuh-crap, FP. Are y-you r-ready or not?” </p><p>“I guess I am,” said FP and found it was true. It wasn’t that he was feeling particularly brave, only that he had come to count on some internal sense of grit that reared up in situations like this one. He couldn’t say no to Fred, and that was the long and the short of it. Until he did, he figured he’d be following Fred into shit like this all his life. “You go first.” </p><p>Fred stepped through the gate and onto the disintegrating stone walk that had once worn a path from the sidewalk to the sagging porch. FP followed him across the weedy trail, their shoes crunching in the broken glass. When they reached the porch, FP saw with dismay that a thick section of latticework was broken at the front. Below the gaping hole, a rosebush lay limp and blackened, leaves and sections of stem scattered across the lawn. The scene was exactly as Hiram had described it on the day they’d built the dam. </p><p>“Oh, God,” said FP hoarsely, and hung a little closer to Fred’s side. He looked around to see if any moldering, slobbering person would come rushing out of the shadows and uncurl their tongue from their head - but nothing moved except the serene bob of the sunflowers near the fence. Fred’s face was grim. </p><p>“You don’t really want to go in there, do you Freddie?” It was almost a plea. </p><p>“Nuh-No, b-but I’m g-gonna.” Fred replied, and FP saw with dismay that that steady hardness had come back into his eyes. It made him look older. </p><p><em> I think he really does mean to kill it, </em> FP would remember thinking. <em> I don’t think that leper or that clown or whatever it is stands a chance.  </em></p><p>“Fred-” he said, but Fred had already walked around to the edge of the porch and was squatting to look through a hole in the siding. FP had to race to catch up, his breath coming in short anxious bursts and the shin-high weeds tearing thin red scratches into his legs. </p><p>FP squatted down beside him, looking under the porch. There was nothing there but dirt and a few empty beer bottles, cushioned by a drift of rotten leaves like the ones that emerged from melting snow when the weather turned to spring. Broken glass sparkled by the shattered windows at the far end. </p><p>In front of FP’s astonished eyes, Fred pulled his father’s gun out of his jacket. He removed the bullets from his shorts pocket and loaded them with quick, practiced movements. The gun was too big for him - the grip was at least as thick as his wrist. He pointed it beneath the porch. FP didn’t understand what had startled him at first, and then he realized a horrible truth: the glass strewn outward from the damaged windows meant they had been broken from the inside. </p><p>“Fred-” he managed again, not knowing where that sentence was going, exactly, but needing to say something all the same. Fred looked at him seriously, the pistol held bravely in both hands. </p><p>“Y-You d-don’t have t-to do this.” </p><p>“What do you mean?” FP had hoped for that answer, but he hadn’t expected it. </p><p>“O-Ozzie wuh-wasn’t y-your b-brother.” Fred said it with a straightforward simplicity that made it impossible for FP to acquiesce. “You c-can suh-stay b-by the b-bike.” </p><p>“Fuck that,” answered FP hoarsely. He moved a little closer to Fred until their clothing brushed. “I’m sticking with you, Freddie.” </p><p>They crawled under the porch. FP let Fred go slightly ahead of him, his friend holding the pistol in one hand as he shuffled forward on his elbows and knees. “Watch the g-glass,” Fred warned. He wriggled up to the broken window and peered in. FP slid up to the window on his belly to join him. </p><p>The sight of the dim, filthy cellar made the hair stand up on the back of FP’s neck. The small room radiated the same ominous feeling of haunting and distaste as the rest of the house. It was little more than a hole in the ground: the floor of the cellar was hard-packed earth, and the walls and floor were streaky with coal. A wooden coalbin the height of the ceiling stood in one corner. In the furthest corner from the window, FP could make out a metal railing and the jutting shadows of a primitive staircase rising up from the floor. </p><p>He shifted back a little from the window, and looked to Fred for direction. To FP’s horror, Fred was sliding his head and shoulders into the gap created by the broken window. Before FP could pull him back, he had slid forward so that only his jeans and sneakers were sticking out, and then his ankles disappeared into the cellar, narrowly missing a grisly shard of broken glass. FP heard his feet smack down on the packed earth inside. </p><p>“Get a load of this guy,” said FP grimly to no one. It suddenly felt very cold under the porch alone. He aimed his shaking voice toward the dark square of window through which Fred had disappeared, and it came out an octave too high. “Fred have you gone out of your <em> mind? </em>” </p><p>“Y-You cuh-can s-stay up t-there if y-you w-want, FP,” Fred’s voice answered from below him. It already sounded far away, as though they were separated by far more than a few feet of wood and glass. “Suh-Stand g-guard,” he added loyally, almost as an afterthought. </p><p>“Aw, you just don’t wanna let me fire the gun,” FP said, his voice trembling just a little. He knew just as well as Fred did that they didn’t need anyone on the outside - Fred was doing him a kindness, giving him a way out in case he couldn’t hack it. “All right, I’m coming down.” </p><p>He thrust his feet through the broken window before he could lose his nerve, shuffling around so he was lying on his front. Something grabbed his legs, and FP screamed. </p><p>“I-I-It’s ju-just m-me,” Fred said. He tugged gently, and soon FP had slid down into the musty darkness of the cellar. He landed on his feet and tugged his shirt down into place. “W-W-Who d-did you t-think it w-was?” </p><p>“The boogeyman,” said FP, and giggled helplessly. </p><p>Fred smiled thinly, but it didn’t reach his eyes. He tipped his head to indicate the coalbin. “Y-You g-go th-this w-way, and I-I’ll g-go-” </p><p>“Fat chance,” said FP, a little too quickly. He reached out in the dim light from the window and took hold of the sleeve of Fred’s jacket. “Someone’s gotta protect you, asswipe.” </p><p>Fred acknowledged this with an obliging nod. He held the gun out ahead of him like a cop from a TV show, his shoulders thrust backward and his jaw set in a firm line. They moved towards the coalpit together, their sneakers scuffling in the dirt of the floor. The door of the small wooden stall was ajar, and Fred motioned for FP to stay behind him. Then he burst into the opening, throwing the swinging door wide. </p><p>Nothing moved. The only thing inside the structure was an enormous pile of coal that went almost all the way up to the ceiling. At the very top of this small mountain was a streaky window that must have opened to the side yard, the glass almost opaque with coal dust. </p><p>FP took note of the window as a possible means of escape. Those stairs in the corner of the cellar were another - but the thought of going up into this house, where God knows what was waiting, seemed worse than anything they could meet down here. Fred turned away from the coal, his face a pale oval in the gloom. His eyes darted around the room. </p><p>“What now-?” FP started to ask Fred, and then the door at the top of the stairs swung violently open. </p><p>FP didn’t see it open - but he heard the heavy crash of the door hitting the wall, and a blinding rectangle of white light suddenly fell down upon the stairs, illuminating the dirty metal and the floor beneath. Fred jumped and FP grabbed suddenly for his friend, his heart pitching up into his throat. His fingers gripped deep into the flesh between Fred’s neck and shoulder, the shape of him solid under his grasping hand. </p><p>The first sound FP heard was a low, animal growl, the noise a vicious dog would make before barking. It was accompanied by a stench like someone had opened a locker full of spoiled meat. Then there was a scuffling, metallic noise, and a dark shape blotted out most of the light. The snarling grew louder, and FP recognized the shuffling noise for what it was: footsteps descending the cellar stairs. </p><p>Fred threw out one hand so that FP was pushed behind him, and trained the gun on the stairs. FP watched over his shoulder as the monster descended, revealing itself gradually in a series of nightmarish fragments: two hairy feet, with yellow toenails as thick as talons; the frayed cuffs of a badly deteriorated pair of jeans; long-fingered, swinging hands, swollen and thick as a catcher’s mitt, covered in dark brown hair. Each of these fingers curled unnaturally inward, like a claw. </p><p>“FP R-RUN!” Fred shouted suddenly. He had the gun trained on the monster, but he chucked FP with his shoulder towards the coalbin. “C-Climb the c-c-coal!” </p><p>But he was frozen, listening to the snarling, jibbering sounds the creature made echo off the dank walls. It came down a few more steps and he could see it was wearing a letterman jacket, the blue and yellow of Riverdale High, with an R emblazoned on its breast. Just above this, a forest of stiff, wiry hair burst through the separated teeth of the yellow zipper, a thick expanse of hair that ran up the creature’s neck and throat. </p><p>“Q-QUICK G-G-GO!” Fred yelled, and FP came back into himself with a jolt. His back connected painfully with the wooden siding of the coalbin, and he turned and scrambled up the shifting mountain of coal, black boulders skittering free under his slight weight and avalanching down to the floor. From far below him, he heard the gun going off. </p><p>“THIS IS FOR OSCAR, YOU FUCK!” Fred screamed, and fired again. </p><p>He didn’t stutter once. </p><p>An enormous howl split the air of the cellar, the sound of a creature in pain. FP managed to get the latch on the window open, and threw his whole weight against it. The window opened out, squealing on a hinge that was rusted almost through. It got halfway open and stuck, and FP gave it a huge shove, leaving coal-blackened handprints on the glass. </p><p>“C’mon, Fred!” he screamed. He turned and looked down. </p><p>Fred had shot it dead in the money, there was no doubt about that. The werewolf - the very same one that FP had paid five bucks to see earlier that June at the Aladdin with Alice Smith - was suddenly missing a chunk of its head. A deep bloody trench had been clipped between its ears, and shards of skull stood jaggedly up from the gap. Scarlet blood blossomed in a damp, perfect ring around the bullet hole that had pierced through the R on its jacket. But it kept advancing towards them, treating these fatal wounds as no more than minor abrasions. </p><p>“Fred!” FP screamed. </p><p>Another gunshot. He could see Fred’s hands holding the gun, and they never wavered. This one buried itself in the werewolf’s hairy chest, right between the teeth of the zipper. The creature bellowed immediately in pain, but this cry morphed just as quickly into a dark and murderous laugh. It was a laugh unlike anything FP had ever heard before, unlike any sound a human had ever made. It sounded to him like a vicious dog was barking its approval, the barks overlapping with the sound of human laughter like some kind of awful double exposure. </p><p><em> It’s not working, </em> FP thought stupidly, and for all the concern he’d voiced to Fred, he realized now that it had never occurred to him that the gun would fail. When Fred had passed it to him under the bridge the oily adult threat of it had seemed like a last resort, something horrifyingly final. But Fred had shot the werewolf three times, and it wasn’t anything like the movies, and still it kept coming. </p><p>Incredibly, it was only then that he remembered how the movie had ended. A silver bullet - oh <em> God, </em>of course you needed a silver bullet. Of course- </p><p>“FUCK!” He screamed. There was coal dust on the lenses of his glasses, and it made it nearly impossible to see. In the inky smear of darkness that was the cellar, he watched the werewolf rush towards Fred, its claws outstretched. Fred leaped onto the coal heap, but a dislodge of coal sent him rushing back down towards the monster. “FRED, GET UP HERE!” </p><p>He had shoved the window another inch open, just enough for them to squeeze through, and for a moment FP thought blood was hitting his face before he realized it was raining. He breathed in a great gulp of fresh air and turned to see if the spell had broken, if opening the window had sucked the monster back into the dark the way Hiram’s leper had disappeared when he’d made it far enough down the road. Fred was a few feet below him, halfway up the mound to the window, the gun still trained on the werewolf, which was lost in the shifting coal. But it was there - FP could hear it yipping and snarling in the dark. </p><p>Fred bounded for the top of the heap, his free hand outstretched, and FP lunged to catch him. For a lovely, reassuring moment Fred’s empty hand landed securely in his - then something tore Fred’s body out of his grip, jerking him hard down the heap of coal </p><p>“FP!” Fred screamed, before his voice was lost in the avalanche of coal and he was sucked back into the dark. FP plowed through pieces of coal desperately, letting the shifting mess carry him down away from the window as he scrambled for Fred’s hand. The werewolf had him - he could see its broad back under the blue jacket, its hairy shadow crouched at the bottom of the coal heap as it buried Fred’s legs under its weight. He couldn’t see Fred’s face, but he could see one of his hands, still gripping Artie’s pistol with all his might. </p><p>“Fred!” he screamed, and Fred’s head and neck appeared suddenly from a gap in the coal, his eyes screwed shut in fear and pain. A trickle of blood ran down the side of his lip. The werewolf growled possessively, and its face suddenly surged up out of the darkness, a face FP had only seen in movies. FP screamed. The werewolf pushed Fred down into the coal with one clawed hand, but Fred was small enough to wriggle free and began doggedly scrambling back up, the pistol still in his hand. </p><p>FP dove for him, without any concern for keeping his own balance. He landed so hard on his stomach that it knocked the wind out of him, but he managed to catch both of Fred’s hands in his own, including the one holding the gun. The pistol's wavering black eye was trained on FP’s face: if Fred pulled the trigger in his panic, FP’s head would be blown off. </p><p>The werewolf grabbed at Fred’s waist, claws digging in, and pulled him back down towards the cellar floor. FP had anticipated this, and managed to hold tight. He yanked hard on Fred’s arms, the werewolf yanking equally hard in turn. FP threw one arm around Fred’s broad back and clutched him in a half-hug, pulling for all he was worth. Fred’s mouth was pressed next to his ear, and FP could hear Fred’s pulse thrumming wildly as though it was his own. </p><p>“G-Get out of h-here, FP.” There were tears on Fred’s cheek - he could feel them against his skin. “L-Leave.” </p><p>FP pulled harder. For an unbelievable moment he thought he was going to win - then Fred was once more being yanked out of his arms and dragged backward down the heap of coal. Fred shrieked this time - a frightened scream that made FP’s heart tumble down into his guts. The werewolf roared in pleasure, and FP jumped as the gun fired. He froze briefly, wondering wildly if he’d been shot, but the noise had echoed somewhere below him. A howl of confusion from the werewolf suggested the bullet had found its mark. </p><p>The pantomime played out again: Fred got free and scrambled wildly for the top of the heap, FP shoved coal aside as though swimming as he tried to reach him, finally grabbing Fred’s arms and holding on for dear life. Hunks of coal avalanched down the sides of the heap, smashing into the floor with sounds like cannon blasts. Fred yelled in pain as the werewolf dug its claws into his leg, and FP helplessly tightened his grip. The werewolf was stronger - it was going to win. Fred was slipping out of his arms- </p><p>Suddenly a Voice trumpeted out of FP’s throat, a voice that burst out from somewhere deep in his larynx and filled the small quarters of the cellar. It was not a boy’s voice, it was a man’s, and the man was the angriest, most ferociously vulgar British man who had ever lived. </p><p>“LET GO OF HIM, YOU BLOODY VARMINT, I’LL BLOW YER BLASTED FOOL BRAINS OUT YOU FILTHY PRICK!” </p><p>The werewolf howled in response, as though this bit of absurdity was a full moon emerging from a dark sky, but FP thought there was a note of something besides anger in it, something like pain or surprise. Fred dove for FP’s hand again, his face and neck streaked black from the coal. The sweaty hand that wasn’t holding the pistol landed on FP’s wrist and grasped, and FP grabbed him with both hands and pulled for all he was worth. He shoved Fred against the small square of the open window, pushing hard at his back as he closed his eyes and tried to shield him with his body. He could barely hear the shifting sounds of the werewolf climbing below him - the blood was rushing too loudly in his ears. </p><p>Fred tumbled through, and FP turned his head just long enough to catch a glimpse of the monster below. It was climbing the coal just beneath him, its long, slathering snout gnashing open to reveal pointed white teeth that looked like they could pick the skin from FP’s bones. Hatred glittered in its dark eyes, and the face and brow were twisted in malice. Its huge claws scrabbled at the coal, but its weight was a detriment: it kept slipping a few paces back with every interval it gained. </p><p>Moving slowly, like a man in a dream, FP reached into his pocket and took out the tin of sneezing powder. From outside the window, he could hear Fred’s voice screaming at him to run. He opened the tin, held it in front of his face in his cupped hand, and blew a drift of white powder directly into the werewolf’s eyes. </p><p>The werewolf stopped climbing and yowled in pain. The glowing yellow eyes squeezed shut against the assault, the white powder clinging to its wiry hair. Its claws lost purchase on the heap of coal and it slid a few feet back, its spine hunched through the letterman jacket. FP felt the British voice coming out of him again, unstoppable. </p><p>“GIT BACK YOU BLASTED MENACE! IF YOU BITE ME I’LL RIP YER BLOODY HEAD OFF AND STICK IT UP YOUR ARSEHOLE!” </p><p>Having delivered these words, he threw the whole tin of sneezing powder at the werewolf like a fastball. It exploded in the monster’s face in a great puff of white smoke, and before it could clear FP dove headfirst out the window, catching his shirt on the latch and tearing it as he tumbled to the damp overgrown yard. Rain - more of a fine mist than individual droplets - cradled his face in its wet embrace. </p><p>“Kuh-Kuh-Quick-” Fred gasped, his hands closing under FP’s armpits from behind and suddenly pulling FP up to his feet. FP shoved his filthy glasses up into place as Fred dragged him backward, staring at the hole through which they had emerged. </p><p>The werewolf’s face appeared, filling the small window as the face of the leper must have done for Hiram beneath the porch, and FP saw the extent of the damage the sneezing powder had done. Its eyes were milky and streaming, the skin around them a damaged, sizzling red. They seemed to be leaking more than tears, as though the powder had liquefied the dark jelly of its eyeballs, which ran down its face in streams. Red burns sizzled across its snout and leathery nose, the hair singed and missing in spots. The gunshot Fred had delivered to its head had displaced a whole chunk of the werewolf’s scalp: the skull seemed misshapen, bloody chunks of skin and hair hanging from around the wound. Blood dribbled down into its face. It screamed and jibbered and snarled, as before, but in between the canine growls the muscles in its face contracted with uncontrollable sneezes. Thick, ropey gobs of bubbling snot flew from its snout and landed on FP’s front. Some of it sizzled onto his wrist, and it hurt like a chemical burn. FP scrubbed it wildly off with a cry. </p><p>“R-R-Run!” Fred screamed, and this time FP obeyed without delay. </p><p>They ran for the bike, legs pumping madly, arms pistoning against the damp air. FP was shocked by the damage he had inflicted. Fred had hurt it with the gun, yes, but somehow FP had hurt it worse, first with the accent and now with the sneezing powder, as though the werewolf had some deathly unheard-of allergy to his sense of humor. </p><p><em> If I had a joy buzzer and a whoopee cushion I might be able to finish it off, </em> he thought, <em> forget the silver bullet, </em> only there was no time for that now and they had nothing of the sort. From the side of the house he could hear the sound of splintering wood as the werewolf tore its way out of the cellar and gave chase across the lawn. Standing on its hind legs it was taller than a grown man - its chest was enormously thick beneath the jacket, and its bent legs were ropey with muscle. </p><p>FP turned his head to look at it again and might have frozen staring at it forever - the grisly sight of the blood leaking down its face, the impossibly dark and foul-smelling hair and the streaming, coal-black eyes - but Fred seized his hand and yanked him fast towards the road. They sprinted full tilt for the tree where Fred had leaned the bike, Neibolt street as empty and deserted as a ghost town. </p><p>The werewolf raced after them, so close now that FP could feel its hot breath on the back of his neck, panting and snarling and slobbering at his heels. It was too close, and he suddenly felt sure that its sharp teeth would fasten into his skin, that he was seconds away from being chewed to a red pulp while Fred looked on in horror - but somehow he pulled ahead, and the hot, stinking breath and harsh smell of rotten meat were all he felt. </p><p>Fred flew to his bike and leaped on, throwing the pistol into the basket. He reached back for FP, but FP was already climbing onto the package carrier, his hand smacking briefly into Fred’s and then both hands fastening on his friend’s shoulders. Fred began to pedal, and FP, terrified, chanced one last look over his shoulder. </p><p>The werewolf’s face filled his entire line of sight. It was right behind them, directly at the back of the bike, lips twisted away from its teeth in a snarl. Blood had run further on the front of its letterman jacket, spreading into a huge crimson blossom across its front. The R was streaked and stained with gore. There was no yellow zipper on the jacket after all: it now fastened with a line of three enormous orange buttons, like the pom poms a clown would wear. But it was none of these details that made FP’s heart slam to a standstill in his chest. The thing that did that was the name stitched on the breast opposite the R, the sort of thing football players got done at Machen’s Sporting Goods for a couple of bucks a few games into the season. The name was smeared with blood and coal dust but still legible, and in curling proud gold letters the jacket read<em> FP Jones.  </em></p><p>The bike was moving, but slowly, too slowly. Fred stood on the pedals, gripping the handlebars from underneath, the muscles in his back shifting, his face tipped to the sky. The bike wobbled and swayed, the rusted wheels clicking gradually into motion, the playing cards just beginning to slap together. </p><p>The werewolf’s paw skimmed through the air next to FP’s neck. Now that they were so close he could see that its hands were horribly big, each the size of a Christmas ham. He flattened himself against Fred’s waist and felt the curved nails whiz by his glasses, inches from tearing into his cheek. They clipped the top of his ear, and hot blood began to run down his neck. He stared back over his shoulder at the werewolf with horrified fascination and saw it was running alongside the bike, its front paws making paddling motions at the air and lending it the up-and-down bounding motion of an excited dog. </p><p>FP screamed, and it swung a paw at him again. This time the claws came near enough to tear a strip into his already damaged shirt, missing the skin below by less than a millimeter. The swipe was so vicious that it lifted the damp hair off his forehead. The werewolf leaned forward towards him, its slobbering tongue hanging out of its mouth, bits of bloody scalp falling down its face from the place Fred had shot it. The bike wobbled and jerked to the side as Fred tried to dodge it, and FP screwed his eyes shut and waited for them to hit the ground. </p><p>But the bike began to pick up speed. Fred pumped the pedals and the tires began to spin, the sound of the baseball cards flapping against the spokes streaming into a steady hum. They stopped wobbling and began to streak in a straight line down Neibolt Street towards the Church School fence. Fred’s bike was moving faster than FP had ever known it to fly, sprinting so fast that the hair stood back from his head and his tattered shirt flapped out straight behind him in the breeze. Rain blustered into his face. </p><p><em> We’re going to make it, </em> he thought incoherently, his clammy hands gripping fistfuls of Fred’s shirt. The werewolf roared again, so close that his eardrums almost popped from the noise. <em> We’re going to make it- </em></p><p>Suddenly the werewolf grabbed his torn shirt and yanked him backward. His legs lost purchase on the sides of the bike, and for one horrible moment he was hanging backwards with his face turned to the sky and nothing holding him up. Then his interlocked hands slammed hard into Fred’s waist, and he clutched onto his friend for all he was worth. Fred tilted back with him, but kept an iron grip on the bike’s handlebars. For a second FP was sure this was how it would end - the bike flipping backwards and throwing them both beneath it to the werewolf - when the whole back of his shirt suddenly let go, starting at the collar and scissoring all the way to the hem with an enormous rip. </p><p>FP turned his head and stared directly into those streaming eyes. “FRED!” he tried to scream, but managed only a silent choking noise. There was no moisture in his mouth, but Fred seemed to hear him all the same. He stomped down hard on the pedals and managed to push another foot of distance between the werewolf’s gaping jaws and their lives, even with FP’s arms crushing tightly into his lungs like a vice. </p><p>Fred pedaled harder than he had ever pedaled in his life. His pulse pounded painfully in the hollow of his neck, his jaw clenched to breaking and his eyes bulging with effort. He could feel the vibrations running up from the pedals and slamming into his legs, his stomach coming unmoored and the slick taste of blood sliding up into his throat. He gasped for air, his lungs scraping empty, but the pain was oddly pleasant: the noise that usually filled his head had dissipated into a silent stream of blessed silence. Pain and memory disappeared like dew, replaced by a blind, senseless exhilaration, a crazy whirling desire to push himself harder and harder. Suddenly he never wanted to stop. </p><p>They were flying now, and he stood on the pedals, tasting blood in his mouth, the throbbing old-metal feeling that came when he ran harder than he ought. The orange-haired clown in the silver suit - it wasn’t a werewolf, not for Fred, who had missed the two o’clock movie at the Aladdin - was somewhere behind them. Fred figured he didn’t need to know how far until it actually caught up. He focused his energy on the pedals under his feet and FP’s weight against his back, letting everything else fade out of existence. FP’s hands were still clutching the wet front of his shirt, and Fred took one hand off the handlebars to briefly plant it flat over the back of FP’s knuckles, checking that he was still there. Then he grabbed the handlebars again and put on another burst of speed, the bike flying like it had grown wings. </p><p>Something hit the back fender and the bike lurched abruptly to the side. Fred pulled the handlebars with a single smooth jerk and righted it. FP shrieked against his ear, and from the way the bike wobbled Fred understood that the clown must have struck him. But FP still had him in a death grip, so tight that he was cutting off his air, and Fred kept going. He was suddenly conscious of the pain in his legs and back from where the clown had grabbed him, but he was determined to ignore it. </p><p>Neibolt Street blurred around them. There was no time to check if the clown was falling behind. Fred stood on the pedals again and pumped, the intersection of Neibolt and Route Two shooting towards him like a miracle. There were a few cars, but the gaps between were enough that he’d make it across without being hit. </p><p><em> We’ll make it, </em> he thought, the three words startling him when they formed in the blank expanse of his adrenaline-gripped mind. He pumped the pedals with the power of someone much older and stronger, someone uninjured and much less exhausted. Rain splattered in his face, plastering his hair to his head. Hot air whipped by him like a tornado. </p><p>It was at this eleventh hour that he finally glanced back over his shoulder to see the thing that was pursuing them. What he saw made him stomp on the brake with a violent lurch that sent FP’s hard head crashing into his shoulder blade hard enough to bruise. </p><p>The street was empty. </p><p>The frozen rear tire laid a streak of rubber along the cracked pavement. The bike tipped violently sideways, Fred’s foot missing the pedal, which laid into the bone of his ankle with an unforgiving smack. He had his feet back on the pedals in an instant, but it was too late to course-correct: the enormous bike flipped over and sent them both hurtling towards the hard concrete. </p><p>FP’s arms had loosed from around his middle. Fred felt his friend’s chest leave the sweat-soaked curve of his spine and his right hand lashed backward to keep them together. He grabbed a fistful of FP’s tattered shirt, but his friend had gone completely limp and only sagged off the package carrier completely. A brief glance behind him was enough to make him panic: FP’s eyes were shut behind his glasses, his face a horrible milk-white, his head hanging limply back on his scrawny neck so that his small adam’s apple stuck out like a plug. He hit the ground first when the bike finally went down, Fred landing next to him while the pavement tore stinging streaks of skin from his knees and the heavy wheel wells battered his limbs and ankles. </p><p>The world through FP’s closed eyelids was a vibrant sunlight red, the color of a sky full of balloons. He didn’t feel a thing as he slumped to the gravel shoulder at the intersection of Neibolt and Route Two, hitting the ground with the jell-o-like ease of the unconscious. There was no pain, just the sense of the world hurtling away from him, the feeling of falling that came halfway between dreaming and waking up. The ground was warm under his back, the rain gentle where it landed on his neck and hair. His glasses fell off and skittered away from his head, the back of his hand smacking the pavement as it flung loosely out to the side. </p><p>He did feel the hard slap to his cheek that brought him directly back to earth. “Ow!” FP yelped, opening his eyes to Fred’s face, huge and worried and blurry. His hand moved on instinct to retrieve his glasses, which were impossibly whole and unbroken, considering the circumstances. He shoved them back on his face. “What did you hit me for?” </p><p>“I t-t-thought you were d-dying,” Fred stuttered. A tear sliced a white track through the coal dust on his face, his hair clinging to his forehead with the rain. The memory of the coal heap and the werewolf suddenly hit him square in the chest, and FP scrambled to his knees as though burned, scrabbling in the decaying pavement while a huge Orinoco truck, none the wiser, laid on the gas on Route Two out of town. His head snapped from side to side, but the stretch of Neibolt Street was empty. For just a second he thought he saw a flash of orange, about a quarter of the way down the road, in an empty sewer grate. Then it was gone. </p><p>“It’s g-g-gone,” Fred said, and FP gasped harshly, one small hand clutching the front of his chest as rain battered his face. “It’s g-g-gone, FP, it’s g-gone-”</p><p>FP stared down the road at the trainyards and slowly crouched back down to the damp pavement. Then he burst into tears. </p><p>“Ssh,” said Fred desperately, and put his arms around him. FP clutched him back, hugging him tightly and burying his face in the hollow of Fred’s neck. His grasping hands fastened in the back of Fred’s shirt, clinging as though the act would hold them both together. Fred’s heart was hammering against his chest, and he could feel his hitching breaths against his temple. </p><p>They held each other in a tangle of bleeding limbs and torn clothes, their faces streaked with coal and sweat and filth as the rain pounded down on their heads. FP tried to think of something clever to say, something that would make Fred laugh again, but all that came out was sobbing.  </p><p>“Duh-Duh-Don’t,” Fred stuttered, but he was crying too. “It’s o-okay, FP. It’s o-okay.” </p><p>FP screwed his eyes tightly shut. Rain danced across the pavement and washed the lenses of his glasses clean. He wanted to tell Fred that he loved him more than anybody, more than someone his age was supposed to love another boy, but the words wouldn't fight their way out of his mouth. Instead they clung to each other crying, the rain washing blood and soot from their clothes and drenching the silver bike, crouched on their knees with tears cutting harsh lines through the coal dust on their cheeks and their faces buried helplessly in the warm skin of each other’s necks.</p>
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<a name="section0007"><h2>7. the apocalyptic rock fight</h2></a>
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    <em>“We’re all together now, he thought, Oh God help us. Now it really starts. Please God, help us.” - Stephen King, It. </em>
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  <b><span class="u">JULY, 1989.</span> </b>
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  <span>On what would be the last ordinary day of Harry Clayton’s life, he rose at the first rays of dawn and went downstairs to start his morning chores. He collected the eggs from the henhouse, soothing the unhappy birds who clucked and ruffled their feathers by speaking to them gently. When that was done he fed the animals in the back pasture, making sure they had water and that the pump was in working order. There was milking to be done and rows to hoe before breakfast, and dusting and sweeping inside the house. There would be picking to do as the month wore on, but for now the summer crops were in their last stages of good growth, ripening and flourishing in the July heat. </span>
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  <span>Harry ate two of the fresh eggs and four strips of bacon for breakfast. He fed Mr. Chips and drank heartily from the backyard pump, enjoying the gritty tang of iron in the water. It was a taste he would remember fondly well into his adult life, the hot sting of each encroaching July bringing back the memory of his father’s fields and their rusted pump, where no water would ever taste as pure or as sweet to him as that of his family farm in the summertime. </span>
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  <span>Today Harry took no special note of it whatsoever: his life was still unrolling before him, as young and fresh as new grass - though he himself would later suggest at a twenty-seven-years-on meeting of the Losers club that it had begun that July to be nudged by some great hand of Fate away from the open pastures of free will and possibility and down a darkly predetermined road. </span>
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  <span>For now, such considerations were far in his future. Harry washed his hands and face at the pump and set off into town. He wore a white t-shirt with a thin flannel shirt over it, which he rolled up at the sleeves so the sun could grace his bare arms. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The chain from Harry’s bike had broken about a week ago, and the replacement he’d found in the combine shed had developed a habit of slipping off, so he headed out on foot. The long walk didn’t bother him - like the other farm kids in Riverdale, he had a tendency to accept such inconveniences as a matter of course. The day was ripe and hot, the sky a bleached blue over his head. Nothing existed to indicate that this was the day his life would change, in fact he remained blissfully ignorant of any wrongdoing as he went bopping cheerfully down the path towards the school. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The custodian at the Neibolt Street Church School, Mr. Gendron, had gotten up early to unlock the building, and all day kids in the school band were invited to come in and polish up the school instruments for the fourth of July parade the next day. Harry planned to quickly stop by the music class, meticulously clean and polish his trombone, and get in one last solid practice of his solo part for when they played The Battle Hymn of the Republic. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Had he glanced behind him as he crossed Route Two onto Neibolt street, roughly at the place where Fred and FP had crashed in the path of the werewolf last month, his plans might have changed in a hurry. Because spread out in a line behind him, walking silently and quickly and gaining ground, were Marty Mantle, Darryl Doiley, Mike Minetta, and Marcus Mason. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The reason that Harry had run across the path of these gruesome four on the third of July was because they were headed in roughly the same direction. A mile or two past the Neibolt Street school and slightly to the east of the Riverdale trainyards was a large gravel pit, a site that held mythic importance to local kids for being a prime place to set off firecrackers. Marty Mantle had come into a small fortune in explosives that week - Black Cat cherry bombs and Kent Cherry Flash Salutes, a handful of Thunder Bombs and some truly wicked M-80s that a friend of his father’s had covertly sold him at a produce stand down the road. He and his friends had set out to detonate these so late in the afternoon because Marty adamantly refused to allow the others to partake of these firecrackers unless they helped him finish his morning chores. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>With much reluctance, Mike, Darryl, and Marcus dragged themselves out to the Mantle farm. Even Marcus, who was the dumbest of them, steered clear of the Mantle property as much as possible. Mike Minetta put it rather succinctly - Marty’s dad was a crazy fucking bastard, getting worse by the day, and it was universally agreed that the best course of action was to avoid him at all costs. But the lure of Marty’s small explosives in anticipation of the Fourth of July was too much to resist. Under the senior Mantle’s disturbingly close watch, they had finished the last of Marty’s chores around one, and this group had just stepped out onto the road leading to Neibolt Street and the Riverdale town dump when Marty spotted Harry from a distance. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, look at that,” said Marty, stuffing his hands in his pockets so they crinkled the packaging of the firecrackers. Anyone might have mistaken his tone for cool and detached, except that a bright, dangerous gleam of interest had come into his eyes. Mike and Marcus chuckled appreciatively. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Let’s get ‘im, Marty.” Marcus broke into an eager run, but Marty grabbed him by the back of his shirt and yanked him to a halt. Marty knew better than most that catching Harry Clayton was easier said than done - he was athletic and fast, fast enough that he’d managed to elude him before. Marty wasn’t interested in losing the Clayton kid today, not when he had a pocket full of cherry bombs and a whole day to give him what was coming to him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He doesn’t see us yet.” His lip curled back in a sneer of disgust. “Let’s just walk and see where he’s going.”  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>So they walked, the sun throwing their ominous shadows out long behind them, taking long silent strides that closed the distance between them and their unsuspecting prey. It was a hot, muggy day, already a real whopper of a July, and sweat dampened the collars of their shirts and collected in big splotches on Marcus Mason’s back and under his armpits. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What are you gonna do to him, Marty?” Darryl asked in a low voice as they were walking. To a bystander, he would have sounded eager - but truth be told, Darryl was slightly worried. He would have no trouble with roughing the Clayton kid up a bit, or taking his clothes and shoes off and throwing them up a tree - but he had a worrying suspicion that Marty had more on his mind than that. Ever since he’d pulled that knife on Hal Cooper… well Darryl had been slightly nervous that something like that would come up again. And Marty had that same look in his eyes as he had that day - a hungry, inhuman glint, like a shark smelling blood. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Darryl was the smartest of the four boys currently motoring down the road towards the unsuspecting Harry Clayton - which admittedly wasn’t saying much, given his present company - but he was bright enough to catch onto the fact that Marty was beginning to go every bit as crazy as his old pops. He was also bright enough to know that the sort of trouble Marty was looking for could get even the luckiest kid thrown in jail. And Darryl Doiley - who would later die in the sewers beneath Riverdale and whose body would not be recovered until the coming September - had every sincere intention of graduating high school. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Marty’s eyes were dancing with something that wasn’t quite delight. “We’re gonna catch him and bring him down to the gravel pit with us. I’m going to put some fireworks in his shoes and make him dance.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mike nodded eagerly, though he privately thought that Marty’s obsession with terrorizing Riverdale’s pre-teen quadrant at this point in the summer had gone a little far. Sure, Mike liked beating up on little kids when they were all in school - he liked that as much as anyone, and if their paths crossed outside the movie theatre in the center of town that was okay too - but Marty had an obsession with the group of kids he referred to as </span>
  <em>
    <span>the little shits</span>
  </em>
  <span> that bordered on mania, and they had already had a number of unpleasant run-ins with them. It had only gotten worse since the four-eyed little queer had struck up a conversation with Marty’s visiting cousin in the arcade, and especially since that fat boy had eluded them down the Barrens on the first day of summer. Mike had already wasted his whole morning on Marty Mantle’s chores, and he hoped Marty would get whatever this was out of his system quickly, because he was impatient to see what those M-80s could do in the gravel pit. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But not the M-80s, right Marty?” Marty was taking longer strides, his black-clad legs cutting silently through the humid air, and Darryl had to jog slightly to catch up. Darryl thought if Marty intended to use the M-80s on this little twerp, he’d probably take off. That would be crossing some line he had only begun to outline for himself. He didn’t want to </span>
  <em>
    <span>kill</span>
  </em>
  <span> anyone, for Christ’s sake. “Right?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ve only got four of those. You think I’d waste ‘em on this little shit?” Marty’s mouth barely moved as he spoke, his dark eyes alight on the small figure some hundred yards ahead of them. It made Darryl think disturbingly of a wildlife special he’d seen on television: a lion hunting down an unsuspecting gazelle. He had cheered when the lion brought it down by the neck, and his mother had scolded him for acting so crudely. Now he felt an unfamiliar twinge of discomfort as Marty picked up the pace, gravel crunching under the soles of his engineer boots. His hands flexed in the jean pockets where he’d stowed them, as though he was imagining squeezing Harry Clayton’s neck. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Harry glanced over his shoulder for the first time since he’d left the farmhouse, and saw the four of them spread out across the road. He froze for a millisecond, his eyes very wide in his face, and then immediately broke into a sprint. For a second Darryl felt another alien emotion - relief. If they couldn’t catch him, maybe Marty would give up the idea for another day. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Marty let out an animal cry, and the bigger boys gave obedient chase, their boots skidding in the dusty gravel. Hearing the sound of these four stampeding towards him from behind, Harry flew towards the Church School, grabbed the handle of the big metal door, and almost yanked his shoulder out of its socket. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The door was locked. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>To his credit, he didn’t hesitate. Had he stayed for a moment more by the front steps, pounded on the door for Mr. Gendron, or tried to find another way in, they certainly would have caught up to him. Instead, with the split-second instinct that would make him a favorite on the Riverdale High football team in three years, he pivoted at once, cut to the left, and sprinted behind the Church School towards the Riverdale trainyards. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Harry ran hard and fast, but with control, pacing himself and trying to control his breathing the way he would on the football field. Darryl and Marcus posed little threat, but Mike was relatively quick, and Marty’s bloodlust flattened out any scientific rationale that said he should be moving more slowly than he was. Harry glanced over his shoulder and saw Marty leading the pack, the sunlight winking off the metal taps of his boots, the whites of his eyes huge in his face as he outpaced his friends. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Harry tore down the long stretch of pavement where Fred and FP had outraced the werewolf and passed number 29 Neibolt Street without so much as glancing at it. His destination was the trainyards gate, which was standing halfway open and locked from the inside. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Harry lowered his head and put on a burst of speed, blew through the opening, and slammed the gate closed. The latch clicked into place, locking the four older kids out. The fence was at least seven feet tall, well over their heads. Harry backed up at once so they couldn’t grab him through the chain. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mike was the first one to get there. He reached for the latch, realized the gate only locked from Harry’s side, and gave the chain link a vicious rattle. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Open up, asshole.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Harry stared at him, torn between intense dislike and a fascination at this display of naivety. He was deeply concerned by the suggestion that Mike truly thought he might apologize, unlatch the gate, and let him through. Marty caught up a moment later, stuffed his hands in the gaps of the chain link, and shook the fence for all it was worth. This was not Mike’s intimidating rattle - Marty flew at the fence like he was trying to tear it out of the ground, shaking it so long and ferociously that even the other boys looked alarmed. Marty’s lips were pulled back in a savage snarl, and flecks of spit spewed from his lips as he screamed through the chain link, shoving his mouth right up against one of the silver diamonds of the fence. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I SWEAR TO GOD I’LL KILL YOU YOU LITTLE BLACK BASTARD!” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Harry backed up, a boy who was tall and strong for his age, but who was still only eleven years old. He knew suddenly that they would kill him if they had the chance. Maybe not the three others, not at first - but Marty would. Marty would and they wouldn’t stop him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Harry watched the group of older boys and found them pitiful. If he were five years older and stronger, he thought maybe he could take them all on, and win. Four against one were a coward’s odds, and yet they were acting as though they had every right to hurt him, that this attack was justifiable and even noble. For a fleeting moment Harry thought it might be very prudent indeed to open the gate and yell at Marty to go fuck himself, and his crazy bastard father while he was at it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They began to scream at him through the chain, a litany of horrible insults that they dealt as grievously as blows. Observing the four of them as they pressed up against the fence, Harry felt a welling of anger and fear. The anger was taller and darker than the fear, spreading from some dark hidden place inside of his soul until his muscles thrummed with it. But common sense kept him silent. Harry was angry but he was also smart - and he knew that bringing up the older Mantle might be signing a death warrant. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>With a dismayed bewilderment, he questioned for the first time in his life how his father could bear to love this town the way he did. Why he’d chosen to raise a family in a place that so clearly would never return anything but hate. Harry had been unprepared for the intensity of their hatred, and yet even then it felt painfully familiar, a natural extension of the comments and gazes directed at his family for years. He stepped further back from the gate, anger making his spine ramrod tall. Eleven was very young to know you were wanted dead, but he accepted this silently, without grief. His focus had turned to making it out of this situation alive. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>A metallic snap announced the emergence of Marty’s silver lighter from the pocket of his jeans. He lit something in his hand, then reared back in a ferocious gesture and flung a cherry bomb over the fence. Harry sidestepped it easily, but the sudden bang startled the other boys into silence - for a brief moment Harry saw a flicker of his own bewilderment in each of their eyes. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Run</span>
  </em>
  <span>, said a calm voice in Harry’s head. </span>
  <em>
    <span>You have to run now. If he catches you, you will die. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Very slowly, very calmly, he began backing up. Behind him, two thick iron train tracks split through a yard of patchy grass, and his ankles nudged at stones and bits of rubble strewn in the weeds. Marty, seeing his prey retreating, let out a scream of brute rage and flew at the fence. Shoving his boots into the links of the chain, he clawed his way to the top with frightening speed and efficiency. The other three boys looked at one another, shrugged, and began to climb in his wake. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Harry turned and sprinted across the trainyards away from this horrifying sight, hurdling over one set of iron tracks and then the next with the fervor of an Olympic athlete. The chainlink jingled musically behind him, and he heard the ominous thud of Marty hitting the ground, quickly followed by the others as they landed on the other side. As he tore across the field he could see the dark spread of trees and underbrush in the distance, separated from the trainyard by another seven-foot fence. The Barrens would be his best shot at finding cover, which seemed like the only way he could escape. Harry could outrun them for a while, but not forever. A painful stitch was already forming below his ribs from pushing himself to his fastest speed. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He ran in a straight line towards the trees, cutting right across the field to carry himself as far away from his pursuers as possible. He smashed his toe a good one on a chunk of concrete in the field, which gave him an idea. In a smooth movement, unhampered by his speed, Harry tore off his flannel shirt and started filling it with rocks that he scooped off the ground, much as he had the day the bird had descended on him in the remains of the Ironworks. Launching an attack was the furthest thing from his mind - the rocks were important because he sincerely thought he was going to die, and didn’t intend to go down without a fight. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He sprinted with this bundle clasped awkwardly to his chest until he had reached the chain-link fence, which he plastered his back against and turned to face his attackers. Marty was in the lead again, spurred on by otherworldly rage. His lips were curled into a snarl, and his hideous face was twisted into a Halloween mask of hatred. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“EAT SHIT, ASSHOLE!” Harry yelled, with all the bravado in the world. His fingers closed around a solid, softball-sized stone, and he reared back with one hand and flung it at Marty. It hit him square in the forehead. Marty, who had been running, slid down onto his knees and covered his face with both hands. There was blood seeping through his fingers. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Marty screamed in rage as the others skidded to an astonished stop, Marcus red-faced and panting, Mike and Darryl goggle-eyed at the sight of Marty on the ground. Harry threw another stone, but Marty stood up and smacked it aside in midair. It connected with the side of Darryl’s shoulder, who yelped, but Marty didn’t acknowledge this. His eyes were sharp and glittering, like darts of ice. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, you’re going to get a surprise,” he said, smiling in a truly frightening way. “You’re going to get such a -” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The next rock Harry threw smashed directly into Marty’s throat. He choked and coughed, color flooding into his cheeks. Harry turned, shoved his sneakers through the chain-link, and started to climb with all his might for the top of the fence. He’d make the drop onto the other side, take off into the trees, and find a place to hide. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The boys swarmed him, and for one terrifying moment Marcus lept and grabbed the end of his shoe, dragging him painfully back down. Harry kicked him off and threw a leg over the top of the fence, dangling briefly in mid-air before dropping and falling the seven feet to the other side. He landed and slid down the slightly sloped ground, the breath whooshing out of him, just as Marty pitched one of the M-80s over the fence. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The boom snapped through the trees and blew a crater the size of a dumpster in the weedy ground. Clumps of soil and rock exploded into the air and showered down on Harry’s head, the force of the explosion blowing a few dead limbs off nearby trees, which crashed down through the foliage. Harry threw his arms over his head, chunks of sod and grass landing around his shoulders and sliding down the collar of his shirt. Now all three of the other boys were staring at Marty with horror and fascination, but Marty’s unwavering glare was fixed on Harry, who was crouched like a scared animal on the other side of the fence. Harry saw his mouth moving, though his ears were ringing too much to hear what he was saying. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re dead,” Marty mouthed. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Harry got up and ran into the Barrens. </span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>There was another group of kids who had decided to use the gravel pit for fireworks on that Sunday, and they had set out from their usual meeting place in the Barrens just after one. Mary had traded a bunch of comic books with a kid she went to synagogue with, and had a brand new package of Black Cat cherry bombs to show for it. When she produced these for the group FP was sent into an apoplectic fit the likes of which Mary hadn't seen in weeks. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Mary!” he shrieked, throwing his arms around her. “I love you, Mary! I love you! Didn’t I always say you were the only one for me? Mary, I’ll never look at another girl again! Please, Mary, can we please go shoot ‘em off in the dump! Oh, please!” He had dropped to his knees and folded his hands, shaking them pleadingly in the air as he attempted the British accent that had saved his and Fred’s lives in the Neibolt cellar. “Please, I’ll bloody well do anything! I’ll bloody do anything, Mary-” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Y-Your accent suh-sucks the b-big one, FP,” Fred had joked. He was helping Hal dig a hole in the clearing that the bigger boy intended to turn into a clubhouse. It was slow going, and both of their faces were smeared with sweat and dirt. FP heaved a sigh and pushed his glasses up his nose, blowing Fred an exaggerated kiss. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I keep trying, Freddie. I feel like if I get good enough, one day I’ll earn your love.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fred smiled, but said nothing. He mopped his sweaty face on the tail of his flannel shirt and eased himself out of the dirt hole. It was about four feet deep, and he sat dangling his legs at the edge while Hal continued to dig. Hal’s face was set and serious, as it always was when he was intent on a task. Alice, watching him, thought privately that it made him look rather handsome. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Let’s go to the g-gravel puh-pit,” said Fred. “They h-have the r-right sized r-rocks f-for the suh-slingshot, and w-we can b-bring them with us to the d-dump.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>As usual, his suggestion was met by a series of agreeable nods. It was Mary, Hal, Hiram, Fred, FP, and Alice in the Barrens that day, as it had been since the day Alice had shown them the blood from the drain. In addition to Mary’s firecrackers, they’d brought Fred’s Bullseye slingshot, intending to shoot at some cans in the dump. No one mentioned it, but they all seemed to find some comfort in preparing themselves for confrontation. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mary had told Fred about the encounter with the dead boys in the Standpipe, and Fred and FP had described the attack at Neibolt street, and the clown that had appeared to FP as a werewolf. Though they’d changed tack since, Fred knew they were all still waiting for him to tell them what they were going to do. The only problem was, he didn’t know yet. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The thought made his heart sink, but as he led the other five onto the ridge that circled the gravel pit, he accepted this responsibility with a somber, self-sacrificial determination. The fight against the clown had become his duty more than anyone’s - because he was typically the idea man, because Oscar had been his brother, but also because Fred had become, in some ineffable way, the one that they all looked to to lead them. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Muh-Muh-Mary w-was r-right,” he said as they reached the edge of the pit, turning to face the five kids behind him, and a hush fell over the group. Mary blinked at him, and Fred clarified with a nod. “We c-can’t go to the puh-police. Or our p-parents - unless suh-someone t-thinks their p-parents would understand.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was a wall of shaking heads. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“M-Maybe other k-kids,” Fred offered. They all looked around at one another, trying to think of some other person who would believe them, and Fred felt a bizarre urge to count heads yet again. He had been doing it reflexively since that morning, and the number never changed, but neither did the conviction vanish that someone among their group was missing. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay, but dibs on Hermione Reyes,” spoke up FP, and scooped his hands out from his chest in a largely universal gesture that forced Mary to whack him a good one in the stomach. Alice pinched her face up into a grimace. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I had an idea,” said Hiram softly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Holy shit, call the Register,” said FP. “New headline for tomorrow’s paper.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“FP,” said Fred, and looked at Hiram. Hiram took a deep breath. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I think we know where the monster lives.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The sewers,” said Hal soberly, and Alice shuddered. Hiram nodded, his face as pale as milk. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The voice Alice heard came out of the pipes. And the blood. There’s a sewer grate right outside the house on Neibolt Street, and you two said you saw something there.” One detail of the story that both Fred and FP had been able to corroborate was the orange flash they’d seen in the drain. “And sorry, Fred, but Oscar was - they found him in a sewer grate too, right?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“R-right,” said Fred quietly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So maybe this thing uses the sewers to move around. Or maybe that’s where it lives.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The cop said the Morlock holes are sewer pumps,” said Hal somberly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The w-what?” Fred asked. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Those cement cylinders with the caps. The ones that hum. PROPERTY OF RIVERDALE SEWER DEPARTMENT is on all of them.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But what does that mean?” Mary spoke up. “If the pumps are in the Barrens where we play, and the thing can hide in the pumps-” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>An explosion suddenly sounded in the distance, and they all jumped. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What was that?” asked Hiram, his eyes very wide. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Just firecrackers,” said Mary soothingly. “Someone else must have had the same idea.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They stood for a moment on the ridge, looking down into the gravel pit. The explosion had been very near and very loud. FP could feel the hairs standing on end on the back of his neck, like static electricity before a summer storm. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“S-Somethings going to happen,” said Fred suddenly. His voice had taken on a strange cadence, soft and very serious. Hal moved slightly closer to Alice. Hiram’s hands began to shake, and he wiped them on his shorts. FP stared hard at Fred and pushed his glasses up his nose. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“R-Rocks,” said Fred. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What?” Mary asked. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“R-R-Rocks. Ammo.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Without waiting for them to reply, Fred started picking large rocks up off the ground, stuffing them into his pockets, and yanking out the front of his shirt to carry more. Hal started copying him without question, shoving rocks into the pockets of his hoodie until it bulged. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>FP’s eyes met Hiram’s, and suddenly they too were picking up stones and stashing their pockets full. Hiram’s breath had started to wheeze nervously, and he rested his hand on his fanny pack, where he kept his inhaler. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mary stared at them all as though they had gone crazy. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What are you doing?” she asked, folding her arms across her chest. The boys continued picking up rocks, undeterred. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“A-Alice, you d-don’t have t-to s-stay with us-” said Fred, and Hal nodded, a large rock in each hand. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alice flipped him the finger. “Shit on that,” she said cooly. “Shit all over that, Fred Andrews.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She bent over and started picking up rocks. Hal stared at her like a man struck by lightning. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Shit,” muttered Mary under her breath, and she started gathering rocks too. </span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>Harry ran in a straight line through the Barrens, heading directly for the gravel pit without knowing it was there. He had run into the very last reserves of his depleted store of energy, and keeping his feet moving had begun to be a herculean task. The older boys were too dangerously near to pull up short and hide, and no matter how he changed his course, they stayed close at his heels. The undergrowth was thick and unforgiving on either side of him, long branches tearing at the skin of his arms and legs. All of his attention was focused on ducking hanging branches and dodging roots underfoot, knowing that one trip was all it would take for the four boys to catch him for good. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Behind him, Marty slammed through bushes and undergrowth like a rhino, his pure, focused hatred keeping him set on his target. Harry understood that if Marty caught up with him, he was not only as good as dead, but that it would be a very painful death indeed. This thought kept his arms and legs moving, though the stitch in his side had tripled in severity. There was a spreading heat somewhere under his ribcage that suggested he had pulled something in his sprint from Route Two, maybe badly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Years in the future, an older Harry Clayton would bring unprecedented honor to Riverdale High as a track star as well as a football player. What he had no way of knowing at eleven years old was that he had broken every speed record in the last half-hour that he would ever set in his life. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>When the trees thinned and Harry broke out into the gravel pit, he pumped his arms and legs even more viciously. With agility his pursuers could only dream of, he flew up the side of the gravel pit and leaped gracefully over the heaped wall of stones and sand. He raced across the center of the pit towards the opposite side, where he noticed for the first time the six kids standing spread out across the clearing. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They had the higher ground - they stood on another heap of stone facing him, complete strangers that nevertheless struck him with the bizarre conviction that he had expected to see them all along. There were six of them, what looked like five boys and a girl, though in less pressing conditions he'd recognize that the small redhead was a girl with short hair. Harry fell at the bottom of the heap of gravel, and the tall, brown-haired boy who must have been their leader - Harry sensed this somehow just by looking at him - grabbed his hand and pulled him up. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Help-” Harry wheezed, gasping for breath. He sensed instinctively that they would help him. “They’re coming-” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Suddenly Marty and the others crashed into the gravel pit, dislodging a huge avalanche of stones from the opposite heap, and Harry’s explanation became redundant. He scrambled up the small hill and stood with the group of kids, none of which, unfortunately, looked like they’d be much help against four teenagers who wanted him dead. None of them looked older than twelve, and they were all very small - with the exception of a huge blonde boy in a green sweatshirt who was so overweight that Marcus Mason looked svelte by comparison. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The older boys pulled up short in surprise when they saw the group, and Marty’s face suddenly cut into a brilliant smile as though with a knife. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, what do you know?” he said coolly. Marty had one of the M-80s in his hand and a lighter in the other, and he clicked it on and off as he approached. “The faggot, the freak, and the fat boy. What is this, the Losers club?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He looked at Alice, ignoring Mary and Hiram, probably because they were so short that they disappeared behind Hal’s girth. Then his gaze switched back to Fred. He took a menacing step forward. Blood leaked down his forehead, and he nodded to indicate Alice. “She let you fuck her yet?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>What happened next was a surprise to everyone. Hal opened his mouth and screamed - not a scream of fear, but a war cry of pure rage and hatred. He ran down the slope, hefting one of the huge rocks he was holding, and threw it directly into Marty’s face, where it connected with his nose with a sound like a hammer striking an anvil. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>For a very brief moment, everyone froze in shock. Then Marty got up, blinking blood from his eyes, his lips stretched in a savage snarl. Blood from his nose stained his teeth and gums scarlet as he screamed at the top of his voice: </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“THAT’S IT, FAT BOY! I’M GOING TO RIP YOU LIMB FROM FUCKING LIMB-!” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hal fearlessly threw the other rock, which clipped Marty’s ear and forced him to duck. Alice joined him, launching the rock she was holding at his crouched form. Fred stepped forward and began to pelt his own store of ammunition at the older boys, delivering each blow with the breathtaking accuracy of an excellent ballplayer. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Marty cried in pain as Fred’s stones clipped his shoulder and forehead, and was hit by a barrage from the side - FP had gathered a handful of small, sharp rocks and was throwing them with chaotic strength, one after the other. Mary landed a good one on Marty’s shin that dropped him back to his hands and knees, and Alice - who would have made a crackerjack pitcher herself - wound up and delivered a huge chunk of stone to the middle of Marty’s chest. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“COME ON!” Marty screamed breathlessly at his friends, who had been watching this with dull surprise. “GET THE LITTLE FUCKERS!” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The other boys began to grub around on the ground for ammunition, but they were immediately attacked with a barrage of rocks. Fred took the lead, racing down the slope, and Alice immediately threw herself after him, her blonde hair streaming wildly behind her. Hiram let out a savage battle cry and flung a piece of rock twice the size of his hand in a strong arc. Harry started gathering more rocks from the ground, his knuckles and palms already bleeding. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“ROCK WAR!” FP screamed, his voice carrying low and loud over the gulley of land. He matched this battle cry with a hearty throw, launching a jagged rock directly at Marty’s head. It went wide, but Hiram, beside him, hit the mark, cutting Marty's bicep with another huge stone. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Rocks and dirt clods flew through the air. They had all played at games of war and King of the Hill with their friends before, sometimes in this very pit, but the scope of this one had become almost adult in its gravity. Mike Minetta, who really was sick to death of all this shit, turned around and took off back towards the trainyards. He didn’t much care if Marty thought he was yellow for it - Mike thought Marty was off his fucking rocker for trying to finish this shit in the first place. Mike had dished out some trouble and now he was finding it wasn’t nearly so pleasant when the trouble dished back. He thought he might go home and see if his older brother had any firecrackers they could set off on their own. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Marty scooped up a handful of rocks in a savage gesture and pelted them at Alice. One struck her hard in the arm, and she let out an unexpectedly girlish shriek of pain. With an enraged bellow, Hal sprinted for Marty and smashed into him like a charging bear. Marty, who had been rearing back to finish the job, was caught off balance. He did not fall so much as fly backwards, tearing his shirt to ribbons on the gravel and leaving a streak of blood from his gushing nose. Hal charged after him and started kicking him savagely, overcome with a fury that made his initial attack seem docile. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re not supposed to throw rocks at girls!” Hal yelled, pelting Marty in the side of the face with his oversized shoe. None of the others could ever remember seeing him so angry - Hal himself could not remember ever being so angry in his life. “You’re not supposed to-” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Marty had flicked the metal lighter still clasped in his hand and lit the M-80, which he flung into Hal’s face. Hal, moving with an instinct that suggested some deep-seated athletic prowess he did not believe he possessed, smacked it back down with a huge hand, as furiously as swatting a fly. The M-80 went straight back down into Marty’s face. He screamed and rolled away, dislodging Hal, who leaped a little further back, and then the firecracker went off with a blast that carved a wide pothole in the gravel and singed the back of Marty’s hair. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jesus, Coop blew his mullet off,” FP said in an awed voice. There was a brief silence - and then Hiram let out a feral battle cry and flew down the slope, battering the older boys with a barrage of stones from both hands. Darryl yelped and covered his face from this attack, but Marcus Mason seemed to have decided to get what Marty had come for, and was charging for Harry again. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Harry flinched, his empty hands up in defense, as the huge teenager raced up the gravel towards him, but Fred stepped up from across the mound and abruptly pegged a huge rock at Marcus’ back. Marcus was as broad as a tree, and the rock found its place as easy as a fastball into a catcher's mitt. Marcus whirled on him, his hatred of Harry momentarily forgotten. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“HIT ME FROM IN THE BACK, WILL YOU, CHICKENSHIT?” He bellowed, and sprinted towards Fred, who was caught momentarily defenseless. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fred was the tallest and strongest of the group Marty had accurately termed the Losers club - but he was also rail-thin, eighty pounds soaking wet, and was, as his mother had once put it, liable to blow away in a strong breeze. Marcus was built like a linebacker and weighed at least twice that at thirteen years old. Fred didn’t flinch at Marcus’ accusation of cowardice. He had seen all four of the bigger boys chasing one very scared Harry Clayton, and figured that didn’t exactly put Marcus up there with King Arthur. He did, however, weigh his chances of survival as someone twice his body weight barreled towards him with the intent to kill, and thought they weren’t very good. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was Harry who saved him, striking Marcus’ retreating back with a barrage of heavy stones that drove him down to his knees. The thirteen-year-old landed about five feet from where Fred was standing, reached helplessly (and rather optimistically) towards him, and then went down in a small avalanche of gravel like Goliath felled by David’s slingshot. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>This comparison reminded Fred that he had the Bullseye in his jacket pocket. He sprinted back to where they’d tossed their stuff and unearthed it, putting a large rock in the leather pouch with shaking fingers and pulling the elastic taut. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Marty had got to his feet, screaming incoherently, and began erratically throwing stones wide, and Fred aimed the Bullseye at him. It worked all right, but the elastic whipped the rock far over Marty’s greasy head, so far that they heard it crash off into the undergrowth far beyond the pit. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You know how to use this?” Fred yelled at Harry, who was watching him closely. Harry shook his head, and Fred looked around at the other kids on the hillside. His eye landed on Alice, who he thought might need it the most - she had been stooping to pick up new rocks and firing only one at a time - and he called her name. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Alice! Use this!” He threw the slingshot overhand, and Alice grabbed it out of the air. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Marcus and Marty were scrabbling and screaming in the gravel, trying to tear up the slope to grab at the younger kids and being beaten back. Darryl, who was ironically the least athletic among them, had the least emotional response and was therefore doing a little better than the other two. Standing at a distance, he was firing stones with emotionless efficiency, peppering Mary, FP, and Hiram, who had battened down behind a fallen tree and were aiming stones from the top of the mound. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Darryl pegged a good one into Hiram’s chin, who went down with a wail. FP leaped defensively in front of him and started hurling stones at Darryl’s head, even after a well-placed hunk of gravel cracked the arm of his glasses. Then a large rock smashed into Darryl’s forehead, courtesy of Alice Smith and Fred’s Bullseye. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Take that, you bastard,” she said, and with her gold hair flaming behind her, one eye squinted shut along the sightline of the slingshot, she looked more beautiful than Fred could ever remember seeing her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>That was enough for Darryl. Holding his forehead, he got up and retreated back down to where Marcus and Marty were flailing. He hesitated for just a second, looking at his two friends, and then took off back the way they had come. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Marcus saw Fred standing on the ridge above him, and his eyes narrowed with dislike. He whipped a huge, sharp rock at him - it glanced against Fred’s forehead and tore a bright crimson line over one eye. Fred turned and glared at him, and Marcus saw something in the eleven-year old’s gaze that scared the shit out of him. Absurdly, he suddenly wanted to apologize. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Coward,” Marcus said, somewhat nervously, and whipped another rock at Fred’s face. Fred ducked it and responded with two of his own. Marcus threw one more and found he was out of ammunition. He bent to pick up a stone from the base of the pit, and saw Fred was walking towards him with a huge, smooth rock in his hand. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“G-G-Get out of h-here,” Fred said in a calm, clear voice. He spoke very softly, but no one had to strain to hear. The whole gravel pit seemed to pause to listen to him. “Or I’ll suh-split y-your f-fucking h-head open.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Marcus looked into the eyes of the stuttering little boy he outweighed by a good eighty pounds and saw that this was the truth. Without another word, he turned around and took off after Darryl. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>This left only Marty standing at the base of their gravel slope. Mary and FP had circled Hiram, protecting him, but he was on his feet now, a rock the size of a navel orange in each hand. Harry stood at Fred’s side, his shirt full of ammunition. Hal’s face was the angry red of hot embers. But it was Alice that Marty was looking at. She had a rock in the pouch of the slingshot, and had pulled the elastic back as far as it would go. She was aiming it at Marty Mantle’s face. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Get out of here,” she said, in a voice that was not quite as cool as Fred’s, but almost. “The Barrens are our place.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You little BITCH!” Marty screamed. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alice didn’t release the slingshot - but a barrage of other rocks flew at him from every direction, and he stumbled backward, taking hits to the chest and neck as he fell to his knees. Marty looked from one of them to the others with increasing shock and concern. He seemed to notice for the first time that his friends had taken off - he looked around himself as though thoroughly confused by their absence. Hal, from whom two of the rocks had come, was breathing hard through his mouth like a bull. His face was alive with an angry red flush that made him look truly beautiful. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll kill you all,” Marty said, but his voice was thin and reedy, almost a whine. Harry joggled a rock up into his hand at Fred’s elbow, but didn’t use it. Mary just turned impassively away as though Marty were below her notice. She linked hands with Hiram and started walking away down the other side of the slope. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alice jerked her head at Harry and Fred. It was a gesture she must have learned from the movies. </span>
  <em>
    <span>I’ve got you covered,</span>
  </em>
  <span> said that jerk. By unspoken command, they dropped their rocks at their feet and turned to walk away. Alice stared Marty down coldly over the Y of the slingshot. But it was FP who had the last word. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Go blow your dad, you mullet-wearing asshole!” he screamed, and flipped Marty the bird with both hands. Like an actor who had delivered his last line, he turned and walked away. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Marty got up, slowly, blood dripping down his face, his eyes on Alice’s slingshot, and then turned tail and ran. Alice slackened her grip on the slingshot and slowly lowered it. She spat on the ground in a decisive gesture for which Fred thought he would remember her forever. For a moment they listened to Marty’s clumsy engineer boots crushing a path of retreat through the Barrens, and then he was gone. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Harry looked around at them then and counted seven kids left on the hillside. He made a note of their number for no rational reason that he could see, except maybe to muse at the mathematical specification that it took seven little kids to bring down four bigger ones. </span>
  <span>Harry was good at math, and he liked doing puzzles and learning formulas, but that didn’t entirely account for the way the number flamed in his head with importance. These six other kids seemed more real, more </span>
  <em>
    <span>there</span>
  </em>
  <span> to him than any of the other kids he knew, those he’d play with tomorrow in the parade and the children of farmers who lived lives parallel to his own. The colors of their clothes were brighter, their gestures more decisive and vibrant. He felt as though he had been asleep for a long time, and had somehow woken up into a world where he had been part of this group all along. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He followed them as they walked in a line deeper into the Barrens, stopping to sit down when they reached a small clearing within earshot of the stream. They said very little. They were all roughed up in various ways, but no one was too badly hurt. The most pressing case was Hiram, who was wheezing and struggling for breath. FP went to him and sat down by his side, pawing through the fanny pack around Hiram’s waist and digging out his inhaler. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Have a whiff of this, Hiram,” he said, and Hiram obediently pressed his lips to the inhaler while FP pulled the trigger. Hiram’s hand wrapped around FP’s, shaking as he held it to the hard plastic. Slowly his breathing evened out, and he released FP’s hand as though embarrassed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alice went to Hal, still holding the slingshot by the leather cup. It swung very naturally by her side. “Thank you for sticking up for me,” she said, and squeezed his hand with the hand that was free. Hal turned the required shade of crimson, but didn’t look away from her. He remembered thinking he would remember forever how small and soft her hand was in his big one. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You bet, Alice,” he said gently. His voice was very soft and very strong. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thank you,” said Harry abruptly. He directed it at Fred, who was closest, but looked around at all of them in turn. “All of you. You didn’t have to do that.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fred squeezed the hand that Harry offered him to shake. It was the second time that day that their hands had touched, but this time he looked into Harry’s face and felt a cold tremor run up his spine. He looked quickly to Mary and then to FP, and saw that they felt it too. His breath caught in his throat. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alice started and looked suddenly about herself as though counting their number, but Fred already knew. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Seven,</span>
  </em>
  <span> he thought, and the word even seemed to click in his head, some puzzle piece fitting into a hard-to-find spot on a rainy afternoon. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>We’re all together,</span>
  </em>
  <span> he thought again, and the feeling was so strong he felt as though he had said it out loud. Whether he had or hadn’t, the others seemed to reach the same conclusion. Even Harry looked momentarily bemused, a soft and lovely emotion flitting across his face. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What’s your name?” Alice asked him. They all turned to look at him, curiosity apparent in their faces, and though Harry was used to being looked at in such a way by other kids, these six seemed to be struck by some essential similarity as much as his difference. </span>
  <em>
    <span>One of us,</span>
  </em>
  <span> their eyes said. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Harry Clayton. My family has a farm south of town.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hi, Harry Clayton,” said Mary easily. “Welcome to the Losers Club.” </span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>They walked together through the Barrens to the clearing where they had left their things. Among a circle of trees, a large rectangular hole had been dug into the ground. A spade stood up crookedly from a mound of dirt beside it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What’s this?” Harry asked politely, looking down into the pit. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, this is Sloth’s big idea of the month,” said FP. “Last month he built a dam and flooded out the whole Barrens with Riverdale turds, but that was nothing compared to this. This one’s a real dinner-winner. This is Dig-Your-Own-Clubhouse month-” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Y-You d-don’t h-have to put Hal d-down,” Fred chided him gently, interrupting FP's speech. “It’s g-going to be g-good.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Geez, Freddie I was joking.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Suh-sometimes y-you juh-joke too much,” Fred replied. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>FP accepted this silently. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“A clubhouse underground?” Harry asked. Sunlight winked savagely into his eyes, and he squinted to see the source of it - a portable radio with a metal speaker dangling from a nearby tree branch.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sure,” said Hal, who looked significantly more confident now that Fred had stood up for him. “It’s simple. We’re going to dig about five feet down or so. If we go any further, we’ll hit groundwater down here. We’ll shore up the sides, and then we’re going to put a trapdoor over the top. We can scrounge up some boards from the dump, and we’ll buy some hinges down at Reynolds Hardware-” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I think it’ll fall in,” said Hiram worriedly. He had pawed through his fanny pack for bandages and gauze, and was now addressing them to the wound on Fred’s forehead. Fred had to sit down for him to do it. Hiram glanced over his shoulder at the group. “Doesn’t anyone think it’s going to fall in with us all trapped inside?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, just suck on your inhaler ‘till someone digs you out,” said FP. He went to the radio and took it down by the strap. Hiram scowled. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay, how about you not act like this right now, ‘cause I’m in the middle of something important." Fred's head wound was too long for a bandage, and Hiram secured a folded piece of gauze to it with some tape. FP hovered by his side, pointing unhelpfully at the blood running down Fred’s cheek. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Suck the wound, Doctor! Go on! Suck the poison out!” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hiram flapped an annoyed hand at him, and the clump of gauze tumbled free from Fred's forehead. The blood had saturated the tape. Hiram cursed under his breath. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Dammit, I wish I had my second fanny pack.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why have you got two fanny packs?” FP asked, and Fred giggled beneath Hiram's arm despite himself. FP looked pleased. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If we make it right it won’t fall,” said Hal confidently, ignoring this exchange. “So after we add the door, we’re going to pull up some pieces of sod and glue them down to the wood. Then when the trapdoor is closed, it’ll just disappear into the ground. Marty and his friends could walk right over us and never know we were there."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Geez, you thought of that?” Harry asked. He had read about something similar in adventure books, but had never imagined it could be put into practice, much less without a father's know-how. “That’s great!” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hal glowed with pride. “It’s nothing,” he said modestly, but a smile played at the corners of his lips all the same. “You can help if you want.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sure,” said Harry politely. Hal suddenly looked nervously at Fred, who turned to look thoughtfully at Harry in turn. Silence descended swiftly over the group as they followed Fred’s gaze. Harry felt suddenly intensely uncomfortable - he was aware suddenly that they were scrutinizing him for something very different from his skin color. They seemed to move and think as one unit, their faces suddenly smooth and impassive. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I-Is there a-anyone w-who duh-doesn’t want him in the c-club?” Fred asked. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Heads shook around the circle. No one spoke. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“O-Okay,” said Fred. “Suh-someone talk.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You go,” said Mary, nudging FP. “You’re best at talking.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, fuck,” said FP, and scratched the back of his neck. “It’s a gift and a curse.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He started to talk. </span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>They told Harry Clayton everything: the werewolf on Neibolt street, the leper under the porch, the clown on the canal, the drowned boys in the Standpipe, the blood from the drain. The stories took the better part of an hour. When it was done, Harry really considered walking home and never coming back. Maybe they were a group of mostly white kids who liked playing tricks on Black kids, maybe they were town kids who liked playing tricks on farm kids - or maybe they were just plain crazy. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But the feeling of belonging didn’t go away - in fact, it got stronger the more they spoke. He thought oddly that he had somehow expected to hear these things - even if the stories were so outrageous that no one could have possibly expected anything of the sort. His chores that morning felt as distant and unreal as though they had happened on another planet. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He remembered the bird - and he remembered </span>
  <em>
    <span>remembering </span>
  </em>
  <span>the bird, that early day in June when he had biked to the canal. He thought the last time he had felt like this was that day. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling exactly - but it carried a sense of responsibility he couldn’t ignore. Suddenly Harry was aware that he could help these kids, or at least that Floyd Clayton could. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“My dad really cares about town history,” Harry began. “There’s a lot of history in Riverdale, and not all of it's good. I like to read up on it.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Me too,” said Hal, and then looked at Alice, as though gauging her reaction. </span>
</p><p><span>Harry nodded. “I think some of it might have to do with what’s going on. This thing</span> <span>you all saw. My father’s got some pictures. He collects them. Only most of them are on slides, the old fashioned kind you need a projector for.” </span></p><p>
  <span>“My d-dad has one,” Fred said. “We keep it in the g-garage. We could m-meet there t-tomorrow muh-morning.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Harry shook his head. “I’ve got to play in the parade,” he said, feeling a twinge of pride - though it was more a reflex of emotion, carrying over from that other planet he had left that morning. “I play trombone with the Neibolt Church School band.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, after the puh-parade then,” said Fred simply. He looked at the others. “C-Can everyone m-meet in my garage after the p-parade?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They all nodded. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, that’s settled,” said Mary, and took the firecrackers back out of her pocket. “Now are we going to let these go to waste, or what?” </span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. the losers club</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <em>“Maybe, he thought, there aren’t any such things as good friends or bad friends - maybe there are just friends, people who stand by you when you’re hurt and who help you feel not so lonely [...] people who build their houses in your heart.” - Stephen King, It. </em>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>The sky was a searing blue on the Fourth of July, the music loud, and the sun dazzling off the chrome bumpers of cars and the golden brass of the Church School band’s instruments. On the light poles lining the sides of Main Street and on the bulletin board in the park where they posted community notices, white Missing Children flyers fluttered like streamers in the slight wind. Bunches of red, white, and blue balloons swarmed the bandstand, and far above them, the occasional lost balloon drifted off into the ozone. </p><p>Fred, FP, and Hiram wandered through the park near the bandstand. Hiram and FP were licking ice cream cones, Hiram licking his in a tidy clockwise motion that kept it from dripping onto his hands. Despite this precaution, he stopped every few minutes to hand it to Fred while he cleaned his hands fussily with one of the wipes from his fanny pack. FP, by contrast, had already dropped his cone in the gravel and cheerfully returned to eating it. </p><p>“Do you know how many germs are on that now?” Hiram was shrieking. “Christ, I can’t even watch you. I can’t even watch-” </p><p>“H-Harry suh-said he’d m-meet us here,” Fred interrupted. “W-What are you l-looking at FP?” </p><p>FP, who had been turning his head frequently to look at the Paul Bunyan statue, snapped his head guiltily back to face Fred. “Nothing,” he lied. He glanced at Hiram, who was rooting through his pills. “You got your second fanny pack, Hiram?” </p><p>“Fuck you.” </p><p>“Fuck your mother,” FP replied comfortably. “Oh, wait, I already did-” </p><p>“FP,” Fred said, as Hiram gave him a vicious shove from the side. FP quieted down. </p><p>“You two believe the new kid about the bird thing?” he asked, taking a hearty bite of his ice cream. </p><p>“I buh-believe him,” Fred said. “Don’t you?” </p><p>“Sure,” FP said seriously. “He said that thing about the orange puffs on its tongue, like the ones we saw. That’s the kicker. It’s like a calling card it leaves at the scene of the crime. Like Lex Luthor or something.” </p><p>“Yeah, except comic books aren’t real life, idiot,” Hiram piped up. FP wiped his ice cream with his index finger and jabbed it at Hiram’s ear. </p><p>“I don’t k-know,” said Fred thoughtfully. It was hard to articulate, exactly, but he thought FP was right. It was like a comic book - almost exactly. His father’s gun had been helpless against it, but FP’s sneezing powder had done alright, as though It somehow operated on the stuff comic books and movies were made of. Kid logic. Fred hoped he was right on that count, because that was maybe the only chance they had.</p><p>“Luh-listen,” he said, interrupting what had become a full-fledged tussle. “I tuh-talked t-to my d-dad about t-the s-sewers.” </p><p>He had learned that the things Hal Cooper called Morlock holes were really pumps designed for moving raw sewage from Riverdale’s downtown core into Sweetwater river. They led into the main sewer pipes, which were large enough for an adult to move through - about six feet in diameter, while the secondary sewers were only three or four. His eager questions had been smothered by Artie’s constant warnings that Fred and his friends must never play in the sewers, never even attempt to enter them. </p><p>“Obviously,” spoke up Hiram, still glaring daggers at FP. “Raw sewage can give you cholera, you know. Ever heard of typhoid fever? E. Coli? A staph infection?” </p><p>FP ignored him. “Did he say why, Freddie?” </p><p>“He suh-said there are city b-blueprints muh-missing. L-Lost. Enough that s-someone c-could get l-lost and no one could f-f-find them.” </p><p>For a horrible moment, they all contemplated this. Trapped beneath Riverdale. Lost forever in the dark. The happy screams and blare of music from the parade suddenly seemed very far away. </p><p>Hiram paled suddenly. He pointed a trembling finger at the bandstand. </p><p>“There…” </p><p>Fred and FP turned around. There was a clown standing front and center on the bandstand - but this clown wasn’t theirs. This clown had red hair, the colour of a fire engine. It was thin and sallow, the patchwork fabric of the costume loose and too short on the wrists. In the white greasepaint of its face, its darkened eyes seemed to be black tunnels above a blue bulb of a nose. For a moment Fred’s heart pounded viciously, but then he spotted the tufts of blonde hair beneath the wig, the askew zipper that protruded from the collar of the costume. </p><p>“It’s not it, Hiram.” </p><p>“There was another one. Behind him. He was making balloons.” Hiram fumbled for his inhaler and gasped on it, his eyes wide and damp. “His mouth was bleeding.” </p><p>They all scanned the bandstand, but there were only dancers preparing their act. The sallow clown saw them looking and waved. FP gagged deep in his throat like he was going to be sick, but forced a relieved smile when the others looked around at him. </p><p>“Hey, I thought I saw that big old bird of Harry’s the other day, but it was just Hiram’s mom doing the shopping.” </p><p>“Shut up,” said Hiram, but without his usual bite. He looked very scared, and Fred put an arm around his shoulders. FP watched Fred’s eyes move quickly across the bandstand and the surrounding crowd, scanning methodically for the clown. </p><p><em> It knows, </em> FP thought, as a group of cheerleaders struck up a pyramid by the stage. <em> It knows better than to show itself to Fred. Because he’d kill it.  </em></p><p>Harry Clayton came jogging up to them then, no longer wearing the blue uniform of the Church School band. He had replaced his trombone in the Neibolt School music room, and had changed into blue jeans and a cream-coloured shirt. A canvas bag flapped against his shoulder. FP noted, almost unthinkingly, how pronounced the muscles in his legs and arms were. Harry was built more solidly than any of them, even Hal and Fred, who were the biggest and tallest, respectively. </p><p>“Hey,” said Harry abruptly, his eyes sliding over Hiram and FP before landing on Fred. “I saw him,” Harry confided, lowering his voice. “The clown. As we were going up Main Street Hill I saw him passing out balloons to kids. It was the same one you talked about. He had a silver suit with orange buttons. And orange hair. And he was smiling, but… there was something wrong with him. He was facing away when I saw him, but as soon as I recognized him he looked at me. Like he could read my mind. And the paint on his mouth was dripping. It looked like blood.” </p><p>“I told you!” Hiram suddenly shrieked. He threw his ice cream on the ground and covered his face with his hands. “I told you! It’s here! Oh shit. Oh God. I don’t like this. Oh, shit!” </p><p>‘Let’s go,” said Fred quickly. His mouth had hardened into a thin line, and his jaw was taut. He touched Hiram’s shoulder with one hand and FP’s with the other, and a brief warmth flared from the place where his fingers pressed. Fred steered them towards the road. “We should f-find the others. Have you g-got the s-s-slides, Harry?” </p><p>“Yeah.” Harry patted his bag. “My dad’s got a lot of stuff about Riverdale. It goes back a long time.” </p><p>“Why’s your dad care so much about this shitty place?” FP asked tactlessly. His own ice cream had melted down to a stump of cone, and he threw it on the ground as they walked. Hiram had his inhaler pressed to his lips and was taking deep, rattling breaths. </p><p>Harry took this in stride. “He thinks it’s interesting. He told me once it was because he wasn’t born here. It’s like he came in in the middle of a movie and-” </p><p>“He w-wants to see the s-start,” Fred said, and Harry smiled at him. </p><p>“Exactly.” </p><p>They found Mary, Alice, and Hal together at the fence bordering the tilt-a-whirl. Mary had been marching with the Boy Scouts, and was wearing her neckerchief and neatly pressed uniform. Alice was eating a stick of spun pink cotton candy and laughing at something one of the others had said. FP gauged by the exhilarated and terrified look on Hal’s face that they might have spent the morning together. The bigger boy was blushing so badly that his cheeks matched the spun sugar in Alice’s hand. </p><p>“W-We’re g-going to my h-house,” Fred explained. “H-Harry’s going to s-show us the puh-pictures.” </p><p>The smiles disappeared from their faces, replaced by the serious looks of small adults. They walked in a solemn pack through the crowded streets and away from the festival, pushing their bikes by the handlebars. Fred’s house stood vacant and quiet - even his parents had gone out to the parade. Music and fanfare from downtown floated very faintly over the tops of the neighbourhood trees. Fred pulled up the garage door and began setting up the projector while the others pulled up boxes and stools to use as chairs. </p><p>FP stared at a photo tacked above Artie Andrews’ workbench. It was a ragged snapshot of the Andrews family on vacation. Oscar was there, sandwiched between his mother and father with a hand in each of theirs. And Fred was standing at his father’s shoulder, his head leaning against Artie’s arm, beaming at the camera. He looked very young and very happy. </p><p>FP had a fantasy sometimes of telling Mr. and Mrs. Andrews off for the way they treated Fred. In this fantasy he was usually over at the Andrews house, maybe eating dinner or sitting with Fred at the kitchen island. The air was thick and painful, and Fred was trying to talk to his parents, and they were ignoring him. FP could see the tears welling up in Fred’s eyes, and his jaw was clenched like he was trying his hardest to be brave, but he was hurting. FP saw him hurting and it made him lose his cool a bit. </p><p>In this daydream he jumped up and laid into both of them, really blew up and gave them the business. Fred looked embarrassed, a little, but grateful too. He looked at FP with stars in his eyes, like no one had ever done something like that for him before. FP indulged himself in this vision the way he did his dreams of becoming a rock star or a stand up comic in his adult life - it had the same mythical, incandescent quality as those daydreams, though this particular one recurred with frightening severity. </p><p>“You’d better start treating your son right,” he told Mr. and Mrs. Andrews. In this fantasy he also had a strong, gravelly tough-guy voice, like he smoked a pack of cigarettes a day. He was suave. He meant business. “Do you hear me? Oscar’s gone, but Fred’s not. Fred’s still here. And your son is the smartest, strongest person I’ve ever met, and you don’t even <em> know </em> it.” </p><p>His arm would go around Fred, then, wrapping around his broad back and holding him tight. Fred’s parents looked shamed, but FP wasn’t done. No, they’d know when he was done. He was just getting started. “This whole time you’ve been ignoring him he’s been braver than you’ve ever been in your life,” FP told them, and his voice rang out across the dining room clear as a bell. </p><p>Sometimes Artie started to give him some trouble, but FP stopped him cold every time. </p><p>“Don’t make me hurt you,” he would say to Artie Andrews, cracking his knuckles. “I don’t wanna hurt you, but I swear to God, I will. If you make him cry again, I swear to God you’ll regret it.” (He savoured these particular words like spun sugar in his mouth, reciting them sometimes in the veil between dreaming and waking like an actor rehearsing for his opening scene.) </p><p>Fred would pull on his sleeve, but FP wouldn’t be calmed. He was a loose cannon. “I’m not crying,” Fred would say sometimes, wiping his eyes and trying to be brave, and that would make FP hold him tighter. </p><p>Artie always apologized. They both did. “Don’t say sorry to me, you say sorry to him,” FP would order, and Fred would turn to him with those wide, adoring eyes, and a tear would tremble on the rim of his lower lashes. </p><p>“You didn’t have to do that,” Fred would say when they were alone. He wouldn’t stutter either - FP would have fixed that one up too. </p><p>“Sure I did, kid,” FP said. “You’re my best friend, aren’t you?” </p><p>And Fred would smile at him, a smile that was brave and hopeful and then he would </p><p>(NO! NO NO NO!) </p><p>(yes yes he would KISS-)</p><p>kiss FP on the cheek, only here the dream would be so bright and wonderful that FP would come to in a start, would throw it off blushing with his tongue drier than sawdust and his stomach cramping madly, the dream and reality overlapping in lovely translucent strips so that flashes of it were still visible - Fred’s hand on his wrist, Fred’s hot dry lips on his cheek, and then he would leave it entirely with superhuman effort and go back to the start like rewinding a tape, sitting at the kitchen table, telling Fred’s parents that they’d better wise up. </p><p>He got as far as telling Artie off the second time around when he looked up suddenly and realized he was the only one still standing in the middle of the garage. Mary was sitting on a folding chair to his right, asking him what the hell he was doing. FP dropped quickly onto a nearby crate and shook the dream out of his head. </p><p>“Just thinking me thinks,” he said glibly, crossing one ankle on top of his knee and bouncing it. Mary shook her head slightly and turned away. </p><p>Fred pulled down the garage door, sealing out the light. In the moment before FP’s eyes adjusted to the pitch black, he had a horrible thought. Suppose something reached out of the dark and grabbed his neck, or a set of teeth fastened in his leg? Suppose the clown was behind them all now? Then the projector flashed on, illuminating a square of flat garage wall, and the breath came back to his body. </p><p>“Some of these pictures go back hundreds of years, my dad said,” Harry explained. He was feeding slides into Artie Andrews’ projector, his broad shoulders silhouetted very handsomely in the blue light. “When you all were talking about the clown, I realized I’d seen something like it before. And after I saw it today, I’m sure I recognized him.” </p><p>“You recognized him?” Alice asked, sounding horrified. </p><p>“Look.” </p><p>The translucent slide clicked into place, throwing an outline of a photo on the garage wall. The projection was a scan of a black-and-white ink sketch, showing a clown entertaining a group of children. The children were smiling, but the clown was not. Its mouth drooped down in a sorrowful frown, its eyes gloomy black pits. FP recoiled a little from the picture. There was an awful aura about the antique photo, as though the black and white lines radiated malice. </p><p><b>PENNYWISE THE CLOWN</b> read old-timey writing across the bottom. </p><p>“What’s the date on this?” Hal asked. </p><p>“My dad says this one is from the early seventeen hundreds. Back when Riverdale was just a beaver trapping camp.” </p><p>This phenomenal news rocketed FP into action. “Still is! Am I right, boys?” FP threw his hand up for a high five, which Hiram ignored. Fred looked at him blankly. Mary shook her head disapprovingly at him until FP slowly lowered his hand. </p><p>Harry, standing at the garage wall, looked cautiously bemused. He smiled almost shyly at FP before changing the slide. Now the image that rolled onto the cement was an official-looking document, the lettering curly and hardly legible. </p><p>“This is the charter for Riverdale Township,” Harry explained. “Ninety-one people signed it. Later that winter, they disappeared without a trace. It had to be a plague or a massacre, but there was no evidence of either one. They say there was still food on the tables. Like the entire camp just got up and left.” </p><p>FP bounced his ankle on his knee. He was starting to think he didn’t like this show anymore. He’d lost his taste for horror a bit after that show at the Aladdin back in June - real life was kooky enough. And this was about as real as it got. He opened his mouth to tell another joke, caught Mary’s disapproving eye, and closed his mouth so quickly that his teeth clicked together. </p><p>“This happened in 1908,” Harry said, changing the slide. Now it was a clipping from the front page of a very old Riverdale Register. <b>IRONWORKS OPENS! </b> was the headline. In smaller bold letters under the large type, it read: <em> Town Turns Out for Historic Gala Picnic.  </em></p><p>The picture showed a ribbon cutting ceremony in front of the then-new Kitchener Ironworks factory. A man in a top hat and tails was holding a pair of scissors above the ribbon while a crowd watched. There was a covered wagon in the background of the shot, and a clown was turning cartwheels for the entertainment of the families. <em> YWISE THE DANCING CLOWN </em> was visible on the wagon’s side in thin script. The clown was mid-cartwheel, and his smiling mouth was upside-down in a jagged scream. </p><p>Harry changed the slide to show a group of children posing in Sunday dresses and slacks, cradling easter baskets. It was followed by a photo of the smoking Ironworks, a cloud of smog and fire that filled the garage wall: <b>EASTER EXPLOSION KILLS 88 CHILDREN. </b></p><p>“Oh boy,” said Hal, sounding nauseous. Alice hid her face in her hands and peered through her fingers. </p><p>“This is 1935,” Harry said, changing the photo again. “The Bradley Gang Massacre. It happened in October that year.”</p><p><b>GANGSTERS SHOT DEAD</b> , was the headline. <em> FIVE MASSACRED IN BROAD DAYLIGHT. </em>FP’s hand reached out and tightened on Fred’s wrist. It was the same street scene that they had seen in Oscar’s album, the angle of the photo almost identical to the postcard where they’d seen the older versions of themselves. But where Oscar’s postcard had featured a joyful parade, these streets were strewn with glass and rubble. Smeared forms that he realized were bodies lay crumpled across the pavement. A mangled, pulverized hunk of metal that had once been a car smouldered at the edge of the frame. </p><p>“That wuh-was the y-year the puh-postcard was t-taken,” Fred stuttered, turning to look at FP, in case he had failed to make the connection. “In O-Oscar’s a-album.” </p><p>Behind the intersection, in the background of the shot, a covered wagon was setting up near the bandstand in Bassey Park. Even with his glasses, FP couldn’t make out the words on the side, but he had a pretty good idea of what it said. </p><p>It was Pennywise. They had a name, and they had a face - but what good was that really when the thing had a hundred faces? <em> Man of a hundred voices, meet the thing of a hundred faces, </em>he thought, and it wasn’t funny, but he laughed anyway. Hiram gave him a dirty look from where he was sitting. </p><p>The projector clicked again, like a pistol cocking, thankfully banishing the dead bodies. The next photo was almost lovely by comparison. It showed a nondescript building with green trees and an open field in the background. </p><p>“This is the Black Spot,” Harry explained. “It was a club for Black service members in the nineteen-fifties and sixties. My dad says white people were allowed, but it was mostly Black folks.” </p><p>The next slide clicked into place, showing a snapshot that was little more than a smeary mess. FP swallowed hard when he realized what he was looking at. The building was on fire - and there were people in the fire, blurred shadows with their arms thrown up like dancers among the tumbling flames. Suspended in the flames on the picture, they seemed almost to float. A pile-up of bodies barricaded the door. </p><p>“The club was torched in 1962,” Harry said somberly. “My dad was there. Sixty people were killed in that fire. It was set by the Riverdale branch of the Maine Legion of White Decency. That’s what they call themselves, but my dad says it’s the northerner's version of the Ku Klux Klan. They wear the same sheets.” </p><p>The group of kids stared at the hooded figures behind the flames, visible in their contrast against the starless night. The next photo slid into place, a shot of the flames behind the small bar. A tree had exploded into fire, reaching flaming tentacles of branches into the night sky. </p><p>The next slide was a close-up of the burning building. The projector clicked again, and the image cut closer to the center of the flames, closing in on a white ball of flame. </p><p>“What’s happening?” Hiram asked nervously. </p><p>As the photos clicked, the flames captured in the photos seemed to dance on the garage wall. Light played across each of their faces. </p><p>“There’s something wrong,” Harry said abruptly. </p><p>“Harry?” Fred asked. </p><p>“This isn’t how it looked before-” </p><p>The projector began to spin faster, firing single shots as the slides clicked into place. Now each frame showed the same picture: the bar in flames, the dark blurs of trapped and dying patrons. The photo enlarged slightly with every click, tongues of flame leaping across the wall. From the blurry images of the fire, a face began to emerge. A face with curving red lips, a shock of fiery hair, white-painted skin - </p><p>“WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT!” FP screamed. He was on his feet, and had grabbed Hiram by the arm. The red smile swelled gorily on the emerging face, overlapping the flames like a double exposure. Hiram grabbed his wrist and let out an ear-piercing scream. “WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT!?” </p><p>“I don’t know!” Harry yelled. He had backed up against the projector cart. “I’ve never seen it before!” </p><p>Mary and Alice were on their feet, screaming. Hal, still seated, was gripping the edges of his chair as though on a roller coaster. The projector kept firing, the image of the clown clarifying and growing larger and larger until it stretched across the garage wall. </p><p>“TURN IT OFF!” Alice screamed. Mary had her hands clapped over her ears. </p><p>Fred stood stock-still, staring at the clown’s face. It was the same thing that had chased him and FP down Neibolt street, the same monster that had sprung out of his brother’s photo album that day in June. But at the moment he was only aware that what he was staring at was possibly the last thing Oscar Andrews (six years old, afraid of the dark) had ever seen. </p><p>FP and Hiram were clutching each other in fear. Harry sprinted to the projector, and Mary lunged for it at the same time. It upended, spilling the slides out onto the garage floor, and Harry gave it an impressive kick towards the garage ceiling. The projector crashed to the ground, but didn’t break. It lay upside down, throwing an empty square of yellow light at a crooked angle on the cement wall and floor. </p><p>For a moment all was silent. Then, impossibly, the projector began to whir again. The empty slots clicked meaninglessly, firing blanks. On the wall appeared a blurry image of the clown, his face smeared in motion but unmistakable, leaning forwards toward the frame so that the flat of his great white forehead seemed to almost touch the invisible barrier between photo and world. </p><p>Another empty slot clicked into place behind the mechanism, and the blur on the image began to clear. They could see its yellow eyes now, the red slash of a mouth, the tufts of orange hair over each of its ears, moving faster and closer as the projector whirred until it almost seemed to break through the concrete. Hiram screamed in fear. Fred could hear their ragged breathing echoing in the dark of the garage. The faint sound of the parade outside seemed nightmarishly distant, as though they were underwater. </p><p>The projector clicked again, and this time the slide really was empty. The illuminated square showed nothing but concrete wall. Heart racing, Fred slowly loosened his hands, which had curled into sweaty fists. </p><p>Then the face of Pennywise the clown exploded violently out of the square of light. Its head and shoulders jutted free of the garage wall, the silver ruffle around its neck springing hugely into three dimensions. Its red-painted mouth hung open, showing several rows of crooked, needle-like teeth. Yellow eyes bulged from its face, with bloody pupils stretching to the size of softballs. Its orange shock of hair flamed as brilliantly as fire in the bath of the projector light, and the mouth opened like a hinge, splitting its face in two. </p><p>Everyone screamed. FP’s head hit the wall, making him see stars. The projector light plunged off for a heart-stopping second and then bloomed back on in a flash, blinding them all. </p><p>The clown leaned impossibly further out of the photo, its elbows and white-gloved hands now free. Its head snapped to one side like a mechanical doll, freezing FP in the glare of its yellow eyes. It gave a giddy laugh that almost made FP’s bladder release, and he watched in horror as fresh blood dribbled down the sides of its mouth. </p><p>The light snapped off. When it burst back on the clown was further out of the frame, one leg free and the foot resting up against the cement wall of the garage like a diver on a platform. </p><p>“IT’S COMING OUT IT’S COMING OUT!” Hiram screamed, before the garage was plunged abruptly back into darkness. When the light burst back on the clown was crouched on the garage floor on all fours, jibbering madly, now as big as a large sedan. It streaked immediately towards them, legs jerking with the spasmodic gait of a very fast spider, its eyes rolling in its enormous head. </p><p>Hiram fell back into Fred’s arms. Harry was crouched on the floor, his arms spread protectively in front of Mary and FP. Alice, running, tripped over the Andrews’ lawnmower and landed hard on the ground. The clown made a beeline for her prone form, and for a horrible second its dome-like skull and needle-sharp mouth filled her vision, as huge as an eclipse. </p><p>Alice screamed. </p><p>Then an explosion of light flooded the garage, brighter than the dim projector glow, and they all turned to see Hal had thrown open the door of the garage. In the moment it took for the light to flood the small space, the sounds of the distant parade swelled in volume and they all blinked stupidly at the brightness. Alice lowered her shaking hands from her face and saw nothing but six terrified kids staring back at her.  </p><p>It was gone. </p><p>Mary switched off the projector. She was sitting on the floor near the pile of discarded slides, which had slid about crazily as if a small bomb had gone off. </p><p>“No,” she said, her knees drawn up to her chest and her hands clamped so hard against her ears that the fingers bent at unnatural angles. She rocked back and forth on the concrete. “No, no, no, no, this isn’t real. It isn’t real.” </p><p>The other stared at her in shock. Fred was the first to cross the room and kneel down beside her. </p><p>“Yes,” he said firmly. “It’s real.” </p><p>“No!” Mary’s eyes were screwed tightly shut, and she shook her head emphatically. Tears ran down her cheeks. </p><p>“You s-saw it t-too, Mary!” </p><p>“I didn’t want to!” Mary sobbed. </p><p>“But you d-did!” Fred grabbed her shoulders firmly and gave her a shake that made her head bob on her neck. He was speaking harshly, but he was terrified, and his throat was dry with hardly-concealed panic. He understood that It wanted to scare them, that It would win if they scattered and never returned. It wanted their denial. “T-T-Tell me you suh-suh-saw it, Mary!” He was almost screaming at her. “T-Tell m-me the t-t-truth!” </p><p>Mary lowered her hands and screamed back at him. “I did! Of course I did, how could I fucking miss it, Fred! Is that what you want?!” </p><p>Fred stood back, his heart pounding. “Mary,” he said softly. He crouched down again and hugged her. Mary wrapped her arms around him and began to cry into his neck. It was the first time any of them could remember seeing Mary crying. FP looked studiously away and saw the others doing the same thing.</p><p><em> It’s scared of us, </em> Fred thought. It was absurd but it was true. <em> That’s why it’s trying so hard to scare us. I think it knows we can beat It now. It’s afraid.  </em></p><p>Mary pulled back and looked at him. Her eyes were clear of the frantic terror that had filled them a moment earlier, and though her pale cheeks were stained with tears, she had stopped crying. Fred’s breathing evened out somewhat. He smoothed her bright red hair down in the back. </p><p>“S-Sorry,” he apologized. </p><p>“It’s okay.” Mary said softly. Harry crouched beside them and put a hand on each of their arms. </p><p><em> We can still kill it, </em> Fred thought. <em> All of us together. If we’re brave.  </em></p><p>He looked at his other friends in the doorway, who had clustered into two groups. Hiram and FP were holding each other. Hal had his arms around Alice, and she was holding his waist. There was a small measure of fear and hysteria in each of their eyes, but they were watching him with hope</p><p>They expected him to know what to say, and Fred felt a rush of distress. The truth was, he wanted to scream and cry and deny it as much as any of them - but they were relying on him to tell them what to do. </p><p>Oscar had been his brother. What he had said to FP was true. </p><p><em> Oh, God, </em> he thought. <em> It starts now. It really starts, and I have to lead it, and I don’t know what to do.  </em></p><p>He was afraid, but the bitter resolve eclipsed the fear. This had begun with Oscar, and it would end with him. He would go alone if he had to, but he hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Something about the seven of them - they had power against It, and they were maybe the only people who did. It was their responsibility to try. This knowledge was strong, and it was bitter, but Fred felt - for the first time since he had pedalled himself and FP away from the house on Neibolt Street - very powerful indeed. </p><p>Something else, too, something he scarcely dared admit to himself - to kill the thing that lived in the sewers would be easier than to walk back into his home through the door connecting it to the garage. It would be easier than to live quietly among Oscar’s ghosts, unwanted, unheard, unloved. To kill the clown would be easier than that. </p><p>It was the only thing he could do. </p><hr/><p>Harry was the last to leave Fred’s garage. The others had parted in small groups, raising kickstands and waving goodbye to each other with the solemn air of a group of people that had signed a very unpleasant business contract. The sun still burned summer-bright over the tops of the houses, but it had begun to recede very faintly as they approached dinner-hour, so that Witcham Street was cast in a warm golden glow. </p><p>“Geez,” said Harry, looking at the sky. “I should go. I have to walk out to the farm, and my mom goes ballistic if I’m late for dinner.” </p><p>“Haven’t you got a b-bike?” Fred asked. He had replaced Artie’s projector on a wooden shelf, pushing it to the very back with a child’s conviction that this would conceal the fact that it was broken. He handled it calmly, without guilt. Harry had apologized for kicking it, but Fred had just shrugged. “My d-dad won’t notice,” he had said, in a voice Harry found extraordinarily and inexplicably cold. </p><p>“The chain’s broken,” Harry said now. </p><p>“You sh-should let H-Hiram look at it.” Fred turned and smiled at him. “He’s guh-good with that stuff. I’ll give you a ruh-ride on m-mine. It’ll be q-quick.” </p><p>“You’d do that?” Harry asked doubtfully. “It’s far.” </p><p>“S-Sure,” said Fred easily, and Harry felt a rush of hopefulness not at all dissimilar to the way Hal Cooper had felt when he had been invited to build their dam. Harry liked Fred, liked him a lot; not only because he and his friends had saved him yesterday from certain death, not only because he had some innate quality that drew people to him and was thus easy to like, but because he thought privately that Fred was exactly the kind of friend he had always wanted to have. </p><p>They walked together out into Witcham Street, where the road was emptying out from the morning’s celebration. The tantalizing aroma of several different barbecues wafted out over the hedges, and the evening sun fell in great slices through the elms. Both were absorbed privately in thoughts of the attack they had just lived through, but they talked in the errant way of young children, about everything and nothing in particular. </p><p>“Where’d you get this bike?” Harry asked when they paused at the bottom of the driveway. </p><p>“D-Downtown,” Fred said. “I suh-saved up for it.” </p><p>Harry passed a critical eye over the gleaming metal frame and was suitably impressed. “I bet it goes fast.” </p><p>“Beats the d-devil,” Fred said proudly. </p><p>“Can I try riding it?” </p><p>Fred allowed him to climb onto the seat. The bike was so tall that Harry’s feet barely touched the ground on either side of the pedals. He held the frame steady while Harry pressed down on the pedals, the rusted metal protesting loudly at the movement. At first the pedals turned so gradually that the bike only wobbled in place, but finally the tires began to slide beneath it with agonizing slowness. Harry made it to the end of the street, turned around, and wobbled back, dismounting in a smooth motion. It was impossibly heavy, and he felt as though riding with another person on the back would be nearly impossible. </p><p>“You have to g-get it up t-to speed,” Fred explained, taking the handlebars with practiced ease. </p><p>“Geez, I bet I can run faster than you can make it to the end of the road.” </p><p>“Y-You’re on,” said Fred, swinging one leg over his bike and pushing off. He stood on the pedals, pressing down with effort. Harry held the lead easily until Fred’s furious pedalling narrowed the downhill path of the bike to a dart of silver-hot momentum. Harry put on a burst of speed to keep pace with him and they raced neck and neck for several yards, Fred pedalling as hard as he could while Harry raced full out. By the time they bolted to a stop where Jackson Street met Witcham they were red-cheeked and laughing hysterically. Fred had won, but only by a hair. </p><p>“Bet you can’t beat me through the park,” Harry insisted. He turned and plowed over the curb and into the grass before Fred had time to reply. Fred sped after him, standing on the pedals to pick up speed as the silver bike’s tires parted long streaks in the lawn. </p><p>The park was deserted in the dinnertime hours, the white Missing Child posters flaming from lampposts in a neatly poetic explanation. There was Fourth of July detritus strewn in the grass - cans and bits of streamer and balloon, trodden down into pulp. Fred made it to the gap in the Riverdale Elementary School fence that schoolkids used to walk home, and turned the bike around in a neat swoop that carved a gully into the packed dirt. Harry caught up to him and made a show of panting obligingly, his hands on his knees. Fred grinned and Harry grinned back. </p><p>“Goes pretty fast,” Harry conceded, and they both laughed again. He touched the bike’s handlebars. “Have you got a name for it?” </p><p>“Silver,” said Fred, though he had never thought of the bike as such before - the word simply came to him, fully formed, out of the depths of his brain he would plunder years later when titling his books. </p><p>“Like the Lone Ranger,” Harry said affirmingly. “Cool.” </p><p>He accepted the loss of the race graciously and climbed onto the package carrier behind Fred. Harry felt no need to explain that he had known the answer almost before Fred had spoken it. Something about the events of the past two days had connected them with a kind of low-level telepathy, certainly no more special than any other close friendship between young kids - only it <em> was </em> different. Harry sensed this very plainly. Yes, the bike was named Silver. He had known this all along. </p><p>“Why the playing cards?” Harry asked, watching them slap against the wheel wells as Fred began to pedal. There was an assortment of them clothespinned to the spokes, battered and faded from the elements. </p><p>“Baseball cuh-cards are g-good if you’ve got ‘em, but p-p-playing c-cards make the best n-noise.” Fred stood on the pedals, the silver bike streaking through the gap in the fence and towards the elementary school. He laid eyes on the wooden see-saw the younger kids used at recess, and an idea came to him - a particularly daring one of the kind that usually occurred to FP. </p><p>“Hold on t-tight.” </p><p>He aimed the bike for the see-saw when he felt Harry’s hands on his waist and shot up the wobbly plank of wood, the outer edge pointing before them up into the blue sky like a ramp bearing to heaven. Then they reached the middle, and the opposite side dropped towards the ground in a flash - for a moment they were airborne, Fred’s stomach in his throat, and then the plank of wood plummeted down to the gravel and sent them sailing across the schoolyard as cleanly and smoothly as a cork from a bottle. </p><p>Harry laughed out loud, and begged Fred to stop the bike so he could try it himself. He biked around the playground in circles until he had the bike up to speed, which took only two wide laps of the schoolyard. Harry was stronger and more solidly built than many kids his age - thanks in part to his chores and the football and soccer teams at the Neibolt Street school, he had real biceps in his arms and his shoulders were broad and taut with muscle. He steered the bike confidently towards the narrow see-saw and sprinted up the lowered edge by standing hard on the pedals. The wood bobbed up under his back tire, and the front came down with a smack that sounded out like a gunshot. Harry sailed Fred’s bike down the incline of the see-saw and did another soaring lap of the play structure, moving so fast that the bike became a silver ghost flying above the ground. </p><p>When he slid to a breathless stop, Fred was beaming at him. He caught the bike by its handlebars and Harry dismounted neatly. </p><p>“Do you play b-baseball?” Fred asked. His face was flushed with excitement and he talked quickly, which made his stutter worse. “All the k-kids puh-play in the l-lot behind the T-T-Tracker B-Brothers T-Trucking. You ought t-to c-come be on our t-t-team.” </p><p>Harry looked at Fred and saw a naive hopefulness in his face that it genuinely pained him to squash. He knew where the town kids played baseball - he had attempted to join them only once and been met with such resounding opposition that he had never tried again. </p><p>“That’s for white kids,” he said, not without some regret. He couldn’t think of a way to explain that, though this was not entirely true, the unwelcomeness that the other kids radiated had impressed upon him very deeply. </p><p>“Sure isn’t! H-Haven’t you heard of J-Jackie Robinson?” </p><p>Harry opened his mouth and then shut it again. He felt annoyance and a small throb of familiar loneliness, not dissimilar from the painfully adult grief he had felt when Peter Thomas had told him that Harry was bound to make the Riverdale High School football team because Black kids were better at sports. It was a compliment, he had said, and it <em> was </em>- only it made him feel wrong, and hopeless, in the way that compliments didn't for other people. </p><p>Fred had the same hopeful eagerness in his eyes, albeit kinder, and Harry could tell that he did not understand, would never understand, and that it would be too laborious and painful to explain. So Harry did what he would have to do many times a day for the long twenty-seven future years he would live in Riverdale until It came again - he let it slide. </p><p>“Maybe,” he said, and Fred seemed satisfied with that. </p><p>They left the playground and followed the dying strains of music out towards Main Street. Fred biked them diagonally across the Riverdale Elementary School yard, while Harry sat on the back, his feet dangling, holding onto the package carrier. There was a gap in the chain-link fence surrounding the yard that led out onto the road, and Silver navigated it effortlessly. Harry watched Main Street flick by in the golden cast of the sun and felt oddly as though he were seeing the town for the first time. </p><p>He was happy. He would remember that in the years that came later, when the other members of their ill-fated club had left without even a memory of this place. Despite the looming threat of Pennywise, of It, Harry had begun to plan that he might invite Fred fishing with him someday this summer. Maybe he’d invite all of them, and that would be nice - they’d go swimming in the quarry afterward, and his dad would be pleased to hear he’d made some friends. The attack in the garage had troubled him, yes, but his fear slid almost secondary to an exuberance Hal Cooper would once again have recognized - he had friends, and he was happy. </p><p>Nor was he truly afraid. Harry was disturbed by the clown but he was also interested - interested in the way that emerged as an itch you needed to scratch, a fascination that was perhaps just as pressing and dangerous as nicotine. He felt better prepared for what was coming than he had when the bird had descended on him in the Ironworks, and he knew he could be better prepared still. Harry felt obliquely confident that they were on the right track, that a considerable perusal of the Riverdale Public Library shelves was all that they needed to help them along. And he trusted Fred innately when he said they could beat it. He trusted Fred with his life. </p><p>When they got to the Clayton farm, Fred braked Silver next to the small barn where Harry’s broken bike was leaning and rested it against the clapboard siding. Mr. Chips came bounding arthritically up to them, and Fred let out a cry of delight and fell to his knees, letting the old dog lick his face. </p><p>“We’re going to m-meet in the B-Barrens tuh-tomorrow,” he said, looking up from the collie’s adoring kisses. “To work on the c-clubhouse.” <em> Meet us there </em> was unspoken. Harry could see by the look in Fred’s eyes that the construction of the clubhouse was very far from foremost in his mind. </p><p>“You think we can beat it,” Harry said. It was phrased as a question, but he wasn’t asking. Not at all. </p><p>“I have an idea,” said Fred in a low voice. “B-But only if Alice…” </p><p>“Only if Alice what?” </p><p>“We’ll s-see,” said Fred, and Harry nodded simply. They stood facing each other, almost eye-to-eye, exchanging a trust and authority that was made very poignant by their young age. They might have been commanders meeting to draw up strategies for a deciding military charge. </p><p>“I’ve got some reading to do,” Harry said, and Fred accepted this serenely. He gave Mr. Chips a kindly pat good-bye and climbed back astride his bike, honking the fat bulb of the bugle horn for Harry’s benefit as he tore off down the drive. </p><p>Harry watched from the porch as Fred biked off down the dirt road, Silver’s huge tires kicking up clouds of gravel and clots of grass. Amid the dust Fred’s figure was very small and slight, the golden hugeness of the dinnertime sun making his hair shine like copper. The love he felt was so strong that it burned him. It was coming, and It meant to kill them - but in the years that came later he remembered that love most of all. </p><p>He remembered feeling very happy and very strong. </p><hr/><p>They finished the clubhouse on July seventeenth. The hole had been shored up on four sides with boards scavenged from the dump, and Hal had carefully overseen the construction of the roof and the trapdoor. They had pooled their allowance to buy the hinges, and spent an afternoon carefully transplanting sod from elsewhere in the Barrens, which Hal glued meticulously to the wood. When closed the trapdoor disappeared completely into the ground, and only if someone got down on their knees and grubbed around would they realize it was there. </p><p>There was a carpet of leaves and pine needles that seemed almost too artfully disarrayed across the top, but that was only because one of them was always fussing at it. Only someone who knew where to look would see that the dirt in the clearing was worn down by seven pairs of sneakers, or would note the tiny bumps of protruding hinges beneath the sod. </p><p>They’d built it well: even if two or three of them walked back and forth over it at once, the roof betrayed only the slightest of bounce. They’d wedged wooden pilings into the hole as supports, which allayed Hiram’s fears about a cave-in very slightly. The clubhouse itself extended about six feet by ten feet underground, just large enough for Hiram to attach the hammock that had always swung above his garage to the support beams. When sealed, the clubhouse was almost pitch black -  they remedied this with flashlights and Fred’s camping lantern, whose beam was strong enough to fill the space. </p><p>“Your ten minutes are up, FP,” Hiram was complaining now. He was squatting in the clearing, and had lifted the lip of the trapdoor just enough to yell in. All seven of them could fit down there comfortably, but it was best to use the hammock alone. Now a beam of light shone from the gap, accompanied by the noisy blare of FP’s cassette radio. “It’s my turn. And don’t fucking take the comic with you. I haven’t read that one yet.” </p><p>“Come and make me,” FP’s voice emerged clearly above the music. Hal, who had been sitting on a nearby rock, writing in a notebook, glanced up at the disagreement. He and Harry had formed a two-man study group off to the side, each consulting furiously with a stack of library books and occasionally cross-referencing notes. Fred, Alice, and Mary were playing a restless game of cards on the surface of a wooden door they’d scavenged from the dump. </p><p>Hiram heaved a frustrated sigh and pulled the trapdoor further open, turning around with prissy cautiousness to slowly descend the steps that Hal had seeded in the dirt. FP watched his descent, blinking owlishly in the sudden light. He waited patiently until Hiram’s eyes were on him again to make a show of looking around the clubhouse walls. </p><p>“I don’t see a sign anywhere.” </p><p>“Why would there be a sign if there was a verbal agreement!” Hiram flung himself recklessly into the hammock, slapping at FP’s chest and arms. “Get the fuck out!” </p><p>“Get off of me!” FP smacked him with the comic book. “God your ass is bigger than your mom’s!” </p><p>“Get your fucking foot out of my face!” </p><p>Fred laid down his handful of cards and stood up. Mary and Alice watched him warily. He said nothing, but there was a grim tightness to his jaw that suggested the time for business had arrived. The others fell into the pure silence of a rowdy classroom that had been unexpectedly visited by a teacher. Neither Hiram or FP could see this development from the clubhouse, but it became eventually apparent their scuffle was the only noise in the clearing. After a noisy thud that suggested the hammock had overturned, both of their heads appeared over the edge of the hole. </p><p>“What’s going on up here?” FP’s voice was a familiar plaintive whine, but a thread of nervousness betrayed him. Hiram’s head was slightly lower than his, and he rested his elbow on the smaller boy’s head. “You guys having a secret meeting without us?” </p><p>“Hal wants to tell us something,” Fred said. He glanced at the blonde boy, who nodded at him. </p><p>“Better go in the clubhouse,” said Harry. “I mean, that’s what it’s for, right?” </p><p>They descended one by one into the small room, and Mary closed the trapdoor over their heads. For a moment giggles rang out at the abrupt darkness, and they felt briefly like kids playing in the woods again. Then Fred switched the lantern on, and they gathered in front of Hal with classroom-orderliness. FP and Hiram sat side-by-side on the hammock without complaint. </p><p>Hal was armed with a stack of books as tall as his waist. He seemed almost to grow as he stood at the front of the clubhouse he had built, a pencil shoved confidently behind one ear. He looked taller and more sure of himself than any of the others had ever seen him. </p><p>“I went to the library,” Hal began. </p><p>“On purpose?” FP stuck his forefinger and thumb against his head in an L. “Virgin alert.” </p><p>“Shut up, FP,” Alice said quickly. </p><p>“Imposeeblo, Senorita.” FP said pleasantly. “I have los diarrhea of the <em>boca-</em>” </p><p>“You got that right,” interrupted Mary, rolling her eyes. “Go on, Hal.” </p><p>“Right.” Hal squared his shoulders and consulted the spiral notebook in his hand. “I think it’s a glamour,” he said. </p><p>“Glammer?” FP piped up. He nudged Hiram hard in the ribs. “Sounds like a lady wrestler.” </p><p>“G-l-a-m-o-u-r.” Hal spelled it. “That’s the Gaelic name for it. Other races and cultures have called it different things throughout history. In France it’s called a Loup Garou. That means werewolf-” </p><p>“Oh, fuck that,” said FP, who suddenly looked nervous. “I don’t like that.” </p><p>Hal shook his head. “It’s not a werewolf like we know it. It could be an eagle, or an elk, or a mountain lion. It’s like a spirit that can change forms. The Europeans talk about it like a vampire. The indigenous people of the Great Plains called it a manitou. And the Himylayan people called it a tallus or taelus, and they said it could take on the shape of whatever you were most afraid of.” </p><p>“That’s it,” said Fred grimly. Hiram wailed and scooted closer to FP, his indignance momentarily forgotten. </p><p>“They have any advice on how to get rid of it?” FP asked, putting his arm around Hiram. </p><p>“Yes,” said Harry. He had been quiet, his own notebook balanced on his knees. He and Hal exchanged a look, and Hal nodded politely to him. Harry cleared his throat and stood up. </p><p>“It was called the Ritual of Chud. Basically, according to folklore, the Taelus is really hard to find. Once you find it, the Taelus sticks its tongue out, and then you stick yours out, and, well, it’s weird but then you both kind of bite into each other's tongues so that you’re attached together.” </p><p>“Oh, gross,” said Alice. Hiram gagged. </p><p>“Well, I nominate Hiram to do that,” said FP, and was rewarded by a glare from Fred. “And then once its got a bit of tongue action, it just goes away?” </p><p>“Well, no,” Harry admitted. “It’s funny, but according to the story, you start telling jokes. While your tongues are stapled together. I guess you do it telepathically. You take turns telling riddles and jokes until one of you laughs. And if the human laughs first, the Taelus kills him and eats him. But if the human makes the Taelus laugh first, it has to go away for a hundred years. Or - I think for our purposes it might be closer to twenty-seven.” </p><p>“Twenty-seven?” Mary asked. </p><p>“I did the math,” Harry explained. “I charted out all the big events in Riverdale. The Ironworks explosion. The Bradley Gang shooting. The fire at the Black Spot. And the kids who have gone missing now. And I realized it follows a pattern. These things seem to happen every twenty-seven years.”</p><p>“Ih-If we n-need juh-jokes and r-riddles it suh-sounds l-like a juh-job f-for FP,” Fred said. FP looked momentarily distressed but forced a smile. </p><p>“Boy, Freddie, what a story to tell when I'm famous and they ask how I got my start." </p><p>“If we send him to do it we’ll all get killed,” Mary said, and the others laughed. </p><p>“I’m not biting anyone’s tongue,” Hiram spoke up rapidly. “You guys do know there’s an AIDS epidemic happening right? One of my mom’s friends in New York City got it just from touching a dirty pole on the subway. A drop of blood got into her system-” </p><p>“I think it’s a metaphor anyway,” Hal explained, with the air of a teacher getting the class back on track after a point had been waylaid in a discussion. “But if this is what we’re looking for, it would explain why it took the shape of something we’re all scared of.” </p><p>“So someone does this tongue crap every twenty-seven years?” FP asked. "Metaphorically?" </p><p>Harry lifted his shoulders. “Maybe no one’s ever done it. Maybe it just sleeps in between. And when an event is awful enough the cycle just slows down for a little while.” </p><p>“We have to do something pretty soon,” Mary said grimly. “Because Fred’s right. It’s afraid of us. Or at least it knows that we know about It.” </p><p>She looked at Fred. FP was aware that they were <em> all </em> looking at Fred, even Harry, who was new enough to the group to be forgiven had he not understood the implicit rules of leadership. The muted light of the summer day trickled in from the cracks in the trapdoor. </p><p>“Well, if we don’t really have to bite its tongue, what do we do to get rid of it?” FP asked. </p><p>“A-Alice n-needs to sh-shoot it,” said Fred calmly, as though this answer had been already prepared. “With t-the s-slingshot.” </p><p>A silence followed this proclamation. Alice, who had already been briefed on the plan, tugged anxiously on her blonde hair. Hal blinked rapidly, as though startled. FP chewed his lip. </p><p>“The slingshot?” Hiram asked warily. “Geez, Fred, if your dad’s gun didn’t do so hot, what makes you think-” </p><p>“The g-gun doesn’t work. When it’s c-coming at us, it might n-not f-fire. But the suh-slingshot will. Like FP’s s-sneezing puh-powder did.” </p><p>“Sneezing powder?” Hiram folded his arms, eyebrows lifted in concern, though he didn’t move from the bed of the hammock. “You guys are cracked up.” </p><p>“Luh-listen,” Fred explained. He laid out the facts. They had all seen Alice use the slingshot during the rock fight. It seemed immutable that she was the best shot. To be sure, he and Alice had gone down to the dump and fired the slingshot at cans they set up on the fence. Fred had hit four out of ten. Alice had pegged ten in a row. </p><p>When Fred was done explaining, FP spoke with a seriousness that was completely unlike him. </p><p>“Maybe the gun wasn’t the problem, Freddie. Maybe we need a silver bullet.” </p><p>Fred nodded grimly. “I t-thought about t-that. I t-think we do buh-both. The s-slingshot and the buh-bullet.” </p><p>“Where do we get the silver?” Mary asked. </p><p>“I can do that,” said Hal quietly. “Leave it to me. But how do you feel about it, Alice?” </p><p>“I don’t want to,” Alice spoke up. “I think Fred’s crazy. I think it should be him. But I’ll do it.” She looked at each of their faces, her eyes bright with fear. “If I’m our best chance, I’ll do it.” </p><p>Hal fidgeted and looked plaintively at Harry, who looked at Fred, who looked at FP. Hiram became fascinated in his shoes. Mary rolled her eyes at them. </p><p>“What?” Alice asked, watching them shift uncomfortably. “Is it because I’m a girl?” </p><p>Hal shook his head vigorously. “No,” he croaked, his cheeks pink. “It’s- It’s-” </p><p>He looked helplessly at Mary, who folded her arms. </p><p>“Don’t look at me,” she said. </p><p>“Well fuck you,” Alice said, giving them all the finger. “You don’t get to leave me out because I’m a girl. Not me and not Mary. We’re smarter than all you pansies.” </p><p>Hal opened his mouth and then closed it again, helplessly. Somehow Fred understood as clearly as if Hal’s thoughts had been beamed into his brain. He had no cause to doubt Alice’s skill or her gender, he was simply head-over-heels in love with her. He wanted her as far away from It as possible. When he finally spoke it was very soft, his voice aimed apologetically to the ground. </p><p>“Ball bearings would be easier to make than a bullet.” He glanced guiltily at Fred and shuffled his feet. “If you still think it would work, Fred.” </p><p>Fred nodded. “It just has to be suh-suh-silver. B-Because it wuh-was a w-werewolf w-when we w-went t-to the h-house on N-Neibolt Suh-Street.” He was spraying them with spit when he struggled to talk, but no one said anything. “FP was ruh-right. It ruh-ruh-r-” </p><p>“It relies on the logic of the things it takes the form of,” Harry said gently. Fred looked relieved, and Harry took over, calmly finishing the sentence. “That’s how we beat it.” </p><p>Hiram and Mary looked doubtful. FP was worrying at the cuticles on his hand. Alice looked mistrustfully at Hal and chewed the ends of her hair. </p><p>“And there’s one more thing,” Harry spoke. “I think it has to be all of us. It matters that we’re all together. I don’t understand why, but it does.” </p><p>Silence. They looked at each other in the dim light. Fred’s heart was beating so hard in his chest that he could feel the blood pounding against his ribs. </p><p>“Well.. okay,” said FP. His eyes were sharp and thoughtful behind his glasses. “Sloth makes the bullets. Alice gets the slingshot. I’ll bring my sneezing powder just in case. Then what? Neibolt Street again?” </p><p>Fred nodded. “N-N-Neibolt S-Street a-again. A-And th-then-” </p><p>“We know, Fred,” said FP. He reached out and squeezed his hand. “Alice blows its fucking head off.”</p>
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<a name="section0009"><h2>9. hiram's bad break</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p><em>"Don't </em>do <em>that! I hate it when you do that, Richie." </em></p>
  <p>
    <em>"Ah, you love it, Eds," Richie said, and beamed at him. - Stephen King, It. </em>
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</blockquote><p>The Center Street Drug opened at six am, and at half-past nine on the morning of July twentieth, Hiram Lodge entered to fill a prescription. The day was thick with humidity, and the cold blast of air conditioning swallowed him as he stepped inside. He breathed deeply, enjoying the faintly medicinal air. The smell of the drugstore had always comforted him - antiseptic and cool, even with the summer sun beating down outside on the parked cars and the pavement already sizzling with the day’s heat. </p><p>He was carrying his mother’s checkbook, and a list of medicines torn from a pink notepad printed with frolicking kittens. This notepad hung on the side of their beige Frigidaire, in reach of the kitchen telephone, and his mother copied out this list diligently every week, though Hiram had been able to recite his routine of medications since the age of eight, and Mr. Reyes had been dispensing them much longer. His mother was convinced that one day he would forget, and then he would not take one of his required medicines, and would likely die. </p><p>That was the kind of thing FP would have a field day with if he saw, and he had rolled it into a small scroll so that the kittens were hidden - though Hiram thought sometimes that he didn’t mind so much when FP teased him, and might have let it unroll slightly in his presence if he came across him on the pavement outside, or in the Costello Avenue Market later when he stopped to spend his allowance on candy. </p><p>He handed the list and his mother’s checkbook to Mr. Reyes at the counter. Mr. Reyes would fill the prescriptions, enter them into Hiram’s account, and sum the total on the ancient adding machine he kept below the plastic sign that warned: <b>SHOPLIFTING IS NOT A “GAG” OR A “GAS” IT IS A CRIME. </b>He would write the price on the cheque that Sonia Lodge had filled out up to the amount, detaching it from its thin pink twin that remained inside the checkbook for Hiram’s mother to deduct from her checking balance. The adding machine would spit out a white receipt, which would be stapled to the top of the not-inconsiderably-sized bag he handed Hiram over the counter. </p><p>All of this routine was comforting to Hiram, including the stop he had planned and would never make to the Costello Avenue Market for a packet of Big League Chew. (He was terrified of the risks of chewing gum entering his intestines, and was very diligent never to swallow.) The walls and floor of the drugstore were so white and sterile that they made his skin and the soles of his shoes feel unbearably dirty - though Hiram bathed and washed his hands with a regularity unbefitting any other child in his age group, entering the drugstore always brought into sharp awareness the dirt packed into his high-tops and the outdoor grime of sunscreen and sweat that clung like a film to his summer skin. </p><p>Hiram walked down the orderly rows of medicines and supplies and stood by the entrance, turning the wire rack that held the comic books as he waited for Mr. Reyes to call him up to the counter. Hiram was waiting at such a distance because Hermione Reyes was sitting behind the druggist’s counter, leafing through a fashion magazine, and he didn’t want her to look at him. </p><p>Hiram understood why boys were entranced by Hermione, though he was too afraid of her to feel lust. Her long, dark hair was glossy black and pulled back in a scrunchie at the top of her head. The front of her purple shirt curved down very low, and there was electric blue eyeshadow on her eyelids. An acid-wash denim jacket with tassels was thrown over the back of her chair. She chewed a wad of gum as she read, occasionally snapping it intimidatingly against the roof of her mouth. </p><p>Safely stationed at a distance, Hiram scrutinized the comics and felt the same reassuring calm and orderliness that he always did within the drugstore, a feeling that made the dirt and filth of the outside world seem almost inexcusably unappealing. This enchantment with the protective bubble of the drugstore would last perhaps ten more minutes - might have lasted forever if Hermione Reyes hadn’t been at the counter that day - but for the time being, he forgot completely about the clown, the clubhouse in the Barrens, and the tongue-biting ritual that had been floating vaguely in his nightmares for the past three days. In these last few dwindling moments of security, he heard Mr. Reyes call his name, and approached the dispensary at the back of the store with only a mild apprehension. </p><p>Hermione, who was ostensibly there to work a summer job, tossed the bag containing his inhaler and medications on the counter. Mr. Reyes had turned his attention to something in his office, and she looked over her shoulder at her father before sliding the checkbook across the polished counter towards him. Her eyes were dark brown and cooly impassive, wide behind severe lines of black eyeliner. </p><p>“You know it’s all bullshit, right?” she asked. </p><p>Hiram started and drew his hand back from the bag. “What is?” </p><p>Hermione snapped her gum. “Your medication. It’s a placebo.” </p><p>“What’s placebo mean?” </p><p>“Placebo means bullshit.” She re-opened the magazine and settled back in her chair. “Your inhaler’s just camphor and water. And your pills are sugar.” </p><p>“That’s a lie,” said Hiram instinctively. He stood blinking dumbly in the fluorescent light, one hand on his mother’s checkbook, feeling the familiar rise of anxiety that tightened his lungs until they felt like a solid, hard thing in his chest. He forced himself to breathe deeply through his nose and slid the checkbook the rest of the way across the counter, tucking it into his fanny pack. </p><p>“Why would I lie?” Hermione asked, turning down the top of her magazine to look over at him. Hiram watched her helplessly, his mouth open, and found he couldn’t answer. He grabbed the white bag and looked up at Mr. Reyes, who had stepped out from the pharmacy’s back room and was standing behind his daughter. Hiram looked at him, questioningly and a little desperately, and Mr. Reyes sighed and smoothed down the front of his white jacket. </p><p>In that sigh, Hiram’s hope of having a grown-up fix everything was dashed. Mr. Reyes gave his daughter a mildly criticizing look, but Hiram thought he looked secretly pleased. Almost too pleased - almost <em> hungry. </em>His chest closed up, and he thought longingly of the new plastic inhaler in the white paper bag. </p><p>“Hiram, why don’t you come talk to me in my office?” Mr. Reyes asked. </p><p>Hiram shook his head quickly, back and forth. </p><p>“Are you sure?” There was an odd smile on the pharmacist’s face. “I won’t keep you long, and then you can be on your way. I think your little friends like to play baseball in the vacant lot around this time. Is that right?” </p><p>Something about the question implied it was a trick - like Marty Mantle asking you what the fuck you were looking at when you crossed paths with him in the schoolyard. Hermione was watching this with interest, her eyes fixed intently on Hiram’s reaction. She was chewing her gum more animatedly, popping it against the front of her teeth. </p><p>“Do you like to play baseball, Hiram?” Mr. Reyes asked. This too seemed to be a trick question. The pharmacist’s sharp eyes betrayed altogether too much interest in the answer behind his wire-rimmed glasses. </p><p>“I… I have to go,” Hiram said. “My mother asked me to be home… so…” </p><p>Mr. Reyes sighed and placed both hands against the gleaming counter. Hiram stared at the coarse hairs on his knuckles, feeling cool sweat blossom in a line along his shoulders and back. He didn’t believe what Hermione had said about his medication - not for a second. But there was something very odd and unpleasant happening here, something that made his stomach turn and his throat narrow to a pinhole with uncertainty. He tried to suck in extra air through his nose as subtly as he could. Mr. Reyes seemed to catch him doing it and frowned, and Hiram stopped in a hurry. </p><p>The pharmacist sat down on a swivel chair behind the counter. He regarded Hiram over a sparkling glass jar of licorice whips, his hands folded neatly on the clean surface. </p><p>“It’s true, Hiram.” Mr. Reyes said patiently. “I didn’t want to tell you this way, but I think it’s gone on long enough.” </p><p>Hermione was no longer even pretending to read her magazine. Hiram looked at her and then at her father, panic and discomfort beginning to shallow his breathing until it came in whistling gasps through his nose. Mr. Reyes leaned slightly over the counter, the fluorescent light momentarily flashing on the glass of his wire-rimmed spectacles so that they turned to two bright blank eyes. </p><p>“You’re old enough to know the truth,” said Mr. Reyes slowly, as though speaking to an invalid, “and the truth is you’re not taking any medicine. Your inhaler, Hiram, works on your lungs because it works in your head.” Mr. Reyes smiled again, a reassuring TV-commercial smile, only it was as void of emotion as the white light glinting off the lenses of his glasses. “Your mother insists on it, because she is determined you are ill, and you, Hiram, are the victim of this fantasy. You’re breathing camphor and water. Hermione’s right. Nothing more.” </p><p>Hiram opened his mouth in an effort to draw more breath and emitted only a hoarse, dry croak. He eyed the white paper bag Hermione had tossed onto the counter. He could rip through the two staples binding the receipt to the bag, pull apart the sturdy white paper and have the inhaler to his mouth in less than fifteen seconds - only to do that while an adult was talking to you would be rude, and Hiram was rarely rude to grown-ups. It made his mother very upset when he was rude. </p><p>“No,” Hiram said hoarsely instead, shaking his head and struggling to suck in breath. “No, I have asthma.” </p><p>“It’s true that you experience a nervous tightening of the diaphragm from time to time. But this is because of your head, Hiram, not your lungs.” </p><p>“I have asthma,” Hiram repeated, a little frantically. “I do, I-” </p><p>“Yes, Hiram. But who gave it to you?” </p><p>Hiram stood very still, his breath thin and frail in his lungs. He thought of his mother screaming at Coach Black that he was too delicate to run, and Coach Black defending himself, saying that Hiram was very fast for his age, that he showed no physical limitations at all. He thought of Fred, and the times he had risked heart failure or tetanus or a broken bone for him, the times that he felt he ought to have had an asthma attack but hadn’t - and he wished badly that Fred were here, because Fred would know what to say or do to put this right. </p><p>Hermione was watching him cooly, and the focus of her dark eyes froze the blood in his veins. His mind screamed that it was a joke, some kind of prank they were playing on him, but his rational mind knew that she had no reason to lie. </p><p>
  <em> Your inhaler’s just camphor and water, and your pills are sugar.  </em>
</p><p><em> No! </em> The part of him that had always believed that old needles and rusty nails would kill him, the part of him that set his watch by his routine of medications, the part of him that believed his inhaler was the crucial difference between himself and certain asphyxiation, screamed in earnest. <em> No, no, no! </em> The part of Hiram that believed that X-Rays could give you cancer and muddy water cholera, that you had to keep your feet dry while playing in the Barrens and take your vitamins, that the drugstore sold health and that his mother wanted to keep him safe - that part of him wailed and begged to be spared. <em> NO! </em> This wasn’t right, Hiram told himself with increasing desperation, Mr. Reyes was teasing him, was indulging in a bit of adult cruelty that his mother would explain away when he got home - it was a <em> joke </em> , a <b>GAG OR A GAS</b>, you might say, a prank - </p><p>
  <em> You’re breathing camphor and water. Hermione’s right. Nothing more.  </em>
</p><p>Hiram snatched his bag off of the counter and ran for the exit. His feet skidded on the polished tiles of the pharmacy floor, and he almost knocked over the rack of comics in his haste to be outside. The bell over the entrance clanged against the glass panel with abrupt and glaring urgency. On the sidewalk outside he ran as fast as his feet would carry him, his breath coming in hoarse and panting gasps, his lungs burning with fire as he sprinted to the end of the block. </p><p>Only then, gasping on the street corner, tears of confusion springing to his eyes, did he realize the danger he was in. Marty Mantle and Darryl Doiley were standing a few doors down, looking directly at him. </p><p>Marty stepped out into the sun, which was so blinding that Hiram had to squint to keep him in focus. His face was very pale, and there were splints on each side of his bandaged nose. Another white bandage was wrapped around the side of his head, over the place where a rock thrown by Fred Andrews had hit home. Despite the drawn quality of his face, he seemed almost savagely strong, the taps of his engineer boots thumping on the concrete as he approached the spot where Hiram was standing. His lip peeled back in a snarl. </p><p>“Lookit this, Darryl. One of the Losers club. Where's your friends, sissy boy? They around to protect you?” </p><p>Hiram, quite stupidly, shook his head no. In fact, Mr. Reyes had been right - the other six members of the Losers Club were behind the Tracker Brothers Trucking Depot, probably watching Fred strike out one of the older boys from West Broadway. Hiram took a step back, and his heel slipped off the edge of the curb, forcing him to grab the Bus Stop sign to catch himself from falling. The sunlight behind Marty was making his head pound - he thought about digging in his fanny pack for aspirin and considered that it was probably too late. </p><p>Marty’s dangerous smile widened. Impossibly, there were no other shoppers or pedestrians on Center Street - the once-busy road was completely deserted. The storefront they were standing in front of had pulled down its blinds. Hiram watched Marty’s dark eyes flicker briefly to each side, verifying the silence of the block. </p><p>“Well, that’s okay. It’ll just be you and me. You got any rocks to throw?” A savage glint of enjoyment had come into Marty’s eyes, the dry glint of sunlight off chrome. “You like throwing rocks, don’t you, queerboy?” </p><p>The word nestled between his ribs with vicious precision, and Hiram considered that it was time to run. He turned to leave in a hurry and collided directly with Marcus Mason, who had approached him from behind and been waiting patiently for this opportunity. Marcus let out a grunt of pleasure and grabbed Hiram by the arms, pinning them down and holding him out to Marty like a prize. Hiram squealed and twisted in Marcus’ grasp, panic making his vision flare suddenly white. </p><p>Marty darted forward with frightening speed. He grabbed Hiram out of Marcus’ arms and threw him in a quick, violent motion towards the gutter. Hiram’s head would have crashed painfully into the curb if Marty hadn’t caught him by one arm and twisted it savagely behind his back, jerking him back upright. The bag carrying his inhaler tumbled out of his grip, and Darryl Doiley stomped on it with a savage laugh. Hiram didn’t notice. The pain where Marty was twisting his arm was so strong that it blotted out all concern - searing agony shot up the limb from wrist to shoulder like red-hot fire. </p><p>Marty twisted the skin on Hiram’s forearm, jerking his elbow behind his back at a grotesque angle. Hiram tore his wrist away from Marty’s grasp, and almost managed to squeeze free. Enraged, Marty yanked his arm up harder than before, and a savage crack split through the air behind Hiram’s head as the bone broke. Hiram, shocked, the pain still a millisecond in his future, went limp. Then Marty dropped him, and the sidewalk rolled up to meet him in a great gray wave of agony. </p><p>He hit the ground on his newly fractured arm, and a splintering pain exploded like a bomb in the back of his head. Hiram’s head smacked down hard into the pavement, his back arching off the ground and a scream of pure agony tearing its way out of his throat. The street blurred around him until he no longer knew which way was up, tears filling his vision and reducing everything above him to a watery smear. </p><p>“You want to throw rocks?” Marty bellowed. He had grabbed a fistful of dirt and gravel from the gutter, and stood over Hiram, small stones spilling out of his grip and raining down on Hiram’s neck. “Here, I’ll give you some rocks!” He shoved the handful of gravel in Hiram’s face and rubbed it. “Here! You like rocks? You want some fucking rocks?” </p><p>Hiram shrieked. Marty kneeled hard on both of Hiram’s skinny arms, and pain scissored so violently from the broken limb that it filled his mind with bright bloody agony. It was a type of pain that Hiram had never come across before in his life - he had never had occasion in his sheltered upbringing to run headlong into this kind of suffering. </p><p>“You like that, rock man? You like that?” Marty slapped him hard in the face with a handful of gravel. It tore great stinging welts into the skin on his cheeks. “Eat it, faggot! Fucking EAT IT!” </p><p>Marty shoved a handful of gravel into Hiram’s mouth, rubbing it savagely into his gums and tongue, following it up with another until he was choking. Hiram’s eyes rolled helplessly back in his head. Marty’s voice came to him from a great distance away - it seemed to float down to him as though from the top of a well. </p><p>“Are you fucking laughing?” Marty’s face grew livid and red, his teeth bared in disgust - but there was incredulity there too, and was it possible - fear? Yes, for one small moment Hiram felt quite certain Marty Mantle was afraid of him. He heard hysterical laughter echoing in the deserted street and realized it might have been coming from his mouth. Amidst the terror and the agony, being hurt this badly was bizarrely exhilarating - it brought out the giddy realization that he could be beaten this badly and survive. </p><p>Darryl was yelling something at Marty, saying they had to leave, possibly - but it was very far away, as though it were happening to someone else, somewhere outside Hiram’s body. He heard a siren, loopy and distant, and then there was shouting and the sound of scuffling feet close to his head. </p><p>Center street had blurred into swirls of meaningless colour, and the pain in his arm throbbed vibrantly, slicing through his fading consciousness in great yellow streaks. He must have been screaming or laughing still - the pain was so sharp and all-encompassing that it seemed impossible he was silent - but a dreamy unconsciousness had wrapped around him by then like a warm grey shroud, and he felt both already dead and very painfully alive. </p><p>He was conscious for a moment in the ambulance - he would later recall being positive that the clown was there, the clown was driving - and then there was the noise and clamour of the hospital, the wheels of the gurney as they moved him under a motorcade of fluorescent lights, and nurses speaking to him with an urgency and agitation that was as soothing as a warm bath. </p><p>He was aware that at some point his mother’s shrill voice joined the din - he could hear her yelling at doctors and nurses, her hysteria loud enough to rattle the pictures on the walls. At some point he was aware of her holding him - tightly, so tightly he was being crushed, and he had to wheeze helplessly for breath over her shoulder, certain he was being killed by his mother’s affection. </p><p>“You’ve had an accident,” she was saying, smoothing his hair - “a very serious accident, but you’ll be well again soon, I promise you, I promise you, baby-” </p><p>Then a doctor was speaking to them - he sounded oddly like Mr. Reyes - saying that it was just a simple fracture, that there was no need for alarm - and his mother was yelling the way she had yelled at Coach Black, yelling so loudly that every head in the place was turning towards him. The antiseptic smell of the drugstore was stronger here. Hiram drank the smell greedily into his lungs until he passed out. </p><p>They set his arm - he remembered this part, because the pain had been sharp and strong, and they’d sat him upright in bed and given him a cool glass of water. Rich July sunlight fell through a window near his head onto the white linoleum floor. They gave him a pill with the water, which doubled his drowsiness. Hiram’s arm felt as though it had been suddenly reattached to his body - he was aware it was heavy and itched badly, and was encased in white plaster like a mummy. </p><p>(the mummy hal had seen the mummy and hiram had seen the leper and it was called the ritual of chud)</p><p>He was brought to a white bed surrounded by a hanging blue curtain, and beyond this curtain he saw shadows moving, heard the raised cadence of grown-ups as they attempted to quell his mother’s rising distress. At some point he heard Mr. Reyes’ voice for real, and it occurred to him that the druggist might have been the one to have called the ambulance. Hermione Reyes pushed her way through the curtain and sat on the edge of his bed, looking mostly bored now with the proceedings, the tassels on her denim jacket swaying when she moved. </p><p>“I brought you this,” she said, and threw the squashed bag from the pharmacy on the bed. Hiram could still hear his mother yelling, but she seemed very far away. Hermione sat on the end of his bed, directly on one of his feet. She took a black Sharpie out of her pocket and uncapped it showily with her teeth, flashing him the smile that made every boy in their grade blush the colour of the setting sun. “They said I could sign your cast.” </p><p>She pressed the tip of the black ink pen to the plaster, her eyes meeting his impassively as she dragged it down in a thick line. Hiram passed out again sometime while she was doing it. </p><p>When he woke, the word LOSER was written in stark black letters across his arm. </p>
<hr/><p>They were playing baseball in the vacant lot that afternoon when Hunter Malloy rode up on his expensive bike and told them the news. The pickup game had started gradually that day - the Losers Club got there first, and they were joined around nine by a bunch of the Costello Avenue and Witcham Street kids to round the teams up to seven each. The richer West Broadway kids showed up closer to nine-thirty, though Hunter and some of his friends were absent, which led to a fifteen-minute argument about who got to be team captain in his wake, seeing as Hunter usually bullied himself into the role by citing his father’s seniority as captain of the local Little League chapter. </p><p>Fred was captain of the second team - this was a fact as immutable and undisputed as the changing of seasons, despite his unpopularity at school for his stutter and his brother’s untimely death. The fact of the matter was that he was simply the best player of the lot - and for all their bullying and talk, the neighbourhood kids would have even let a girl be team captain if she had had Fred’s arm. </p><p>Today a kid named Manny Muggs was named captain for the opposing team - mostly due to the fact that he had the nicest bat and glove, an enviable white-ash Louisville Slugger and a huge Rawlings Left-Hander with leather as smooth and gold as butter. Because Fred was the only member of the Losers Club worth choosing, they all always ended up on the same side. Today he picked Harry first, who had joined them for the first time, then Mary, then FP. He would have picked Hal, but once enough kids turned up to make regulation-size teams, Hal had gone quietly to the bench and sat down next to Alice. </p><p>Alice found watching the game unbelievably frustrating - though she had never played baseball, she knew she had a better arm than some of the other kids, and watching Kenny Klump attempt a prissy throw to third that bounced halfway to the plate was an exercise in unbearable aggravation. She stayed benched because there was just enough possibility of word getting back to her father that she’d been grubbing around in the Tracker Brothers lot with a bunch of boys to keep her from feeling comfortable. Besides that, there was enough dissent on the diamond already. </p><p>It was Harry Clayton’s first time playing with them, and though this was met with some muttering and wariness from those gathered, apprehensions were kept rather muted in the interest of stopping Fred from turning the game into a brawl, which he seemed apt to do if Harry was challenged. Harry was playing an excellent game, scoring four runs in the first two innings and fielding so well that he was moved to shortstop before the third inning was over. Mary played a strong second base, even though her at-bats were clumsy, and even FP, who was stuck out in the outfield where no one could hear his jokes, made a couple impressive plays that pissed off the West Broadway kids immensely. </p><p>Once he began to attract attention Harry began to play more carefully, but Fred’s team was still doing incredibly well. By the end of the first nine-inning game, Fred’s team had beat out Manny’s 15-4, and though Fred had pitched nine straight innings by then, his arm was as strong as if it was his first. There were some good-natured insults hurled at him as he stepped up to the mound, but by then some of the tension caused by Harry’s arrival had abated. For all their differences, the kids from both sides of town took their baseball as seriously as their parents took church and politics - there was a lot of heckling and shouting, and in the seventh inning an argument almost came to blows about the position of someone’s foot on second base - but they loved and respected the game, and any animosity between teams was somewhat mollified by the understanding that without one another, Fred’s pitching arm and Manny’s white-ash bat, summer would be a long and boring season indeed. </p><p>Fred had shut down the first batter and was standing on the pitcher’s mound to shut down the second when Hunter Malloy rode up on his bike, accompanied by a couple of his school friends in T-shirts and blue jeans. He stopped his bike with one foot and raised his voice to carry across the packed dirt. </p><p>“Hey, Andrews! Jones! Your buddy got beat up.” </p><p>All heads on the ballfield turned from the game to this unexpected proclamation. Alice, seated on the bench, suddenly grabbed Hal’s knee in concern. </p><p>“W-What do you m-mean?” Fred asked. He still stood in position to pitch, his body angled to the right, the ball gripped strongly along the seams. He radiated a perfect stillness when he pitched, and a bit of that magic clung to him now; with his legs coated with dust, his baseball tee slumping slightly off one shoulder to expose his tanned neck, he addressed the older and taller boy as an equal. Only his wide eyes betrayed his growing concern. </p><p>Hunter was rather enjoying his role as messenger. “Hermione saw Marty and a bunch of ‘em going to town on him outside the drugstore. They took him off in an ambulance.” </p><p>Fred turned to look at FP, who had moved in close in anticipation of a weak at-bat, and his eyes flared with panic. They did a quick headcount - the four of them on the diamond, Alice and Hal on the bench. Hiram missing. FP’s eyes had gone huge behind his glasses. Mary gave up her position entirely and walked over to the mound, slamming her hand anxiously into the pocket of her worn-out glove. Harry drew closer too, concern filling his features. </p><p>“Come on,” Fred said to his friends. They moved quickly over to the bench, where Alice and Hal rose up immediately to meet them. </p><p>“Where are you going?” The batter wailed. He was one of the bigger West Broadway kids, and was unaccustomed to not getting his way. He would have called the group losers on a regular day, but he was very unhappy about losing four of the other team’s players, especially Fred, without whom there was really no point in finishing the second game. A few other kids rose from the bench and called out in protest. Fred ignored them, all of them sprinting in a pack to where they had dumped their bikes. </p><p>“We can’t bike all the way to the hospital,” Hal said. He hadn’t been playing, but the July heat was so oppressive that his sweatshirt was damp across the back with sweat. His hair was glued down to his forehead in blonde spikes. </p><p>“Sh-sure we c-can. It’ll tuh-take a l-little w-while, b-but we can d-do it. I’ve done it b-before.” Fred looked at each of them. “Unless suh-someone’s puh-parents would d-drive us.” </p><p>They did a quick survey. Mary’s father had taken the car to work, as had Fred’s. Hal’s mother had gone into town to go shopping, and would likely be there all day. Harry’s house was almost as far as the hospital, and they wouldn’t all fit in his dad’s truck. FP was the only one to whom this really applied, and he lifted his shoulders helplessly. </p><p>“Sorry keed,” he said in an indeterminate accent, shoving his glasses up his face. The lenses were coated with a thin film of red dirt from the vacant lot. “My mom took the car out this morning. We’re on our own.” </p><p>Despite the nonchalant gesture, his eyes bulged with panic, and FP was looking at Fred the way a drowning victim might watch a lifeguard - as though Fred was his only and final hope. Fred wasted no more time, rushing to his huge bike and pulling it up by the handlebars. Hal hesitated only a second before following suit, and the others scrambled behind him. </p><p>They did bike to the Riverdale hospital, pedalling furiously in a grim pack - but it was all for nothing. When they reached the waiting area, their dusty shoes leaving a trail of baseball grime on the pristine hallways, Mrs. Lodge stood up to bar their way. </p><p>“You can’t see him,” she said. Her eyes swept over them, taking them in as a pack: Hal’s sweatshirt, Mary’s short hair, the film of dirt and summer grime that covered their clothes. Her voice shook with rage. “You can’t see him ever again. You’re responsible, all of you. You’re a bad influence on him, I’ve always known. My Hiram is very delicate. He shouldn’t be playing with - with <em> bad </em> kids.” </p><p>FP tensed at Hiram’s name, but wisely stayed silent. Fred, the appointed leader, tried reasonably to appeal in the polite voice he saved for grown-ups: </p><p>“M-M-Mrs. L-Lodge, we d-didn’t h-have a-anything t-to do w-with- </p><p>“Don’t you dare speak back to me!” Hiram’s mother screamed, and the others shrank behind Fred as though from the force of her anger. The few other adults in the waiting room were watching this development with the kind of interest reserved for minor car accidents. “I don’t want you anywhere near him, you horrible, horrible boy!” </p><p>Fred stood steady in the path of her anger, his hands pushed down into the pockets of his jeans, looking up at Hiram’s mother with a pale face that shone with sorrow and concern. A nurse in blue scrubs was approaching the scene as though to interrupt Mrs. Lodge’s tirade, her brisk steps echoing on the gleaming floor tiles. </p><p>“Ma’am-” she called. “I’m going to have to ask you to quiet down, or leave-” </p><p>“Leave?!” Sonia Lodge shook with rage. “You’d ask a mother to leave? With her baby on death’s door? He may never use his arm again!” She spun around to face the nurse so quickly that the gold latch of her oversized purse opened, and a set of car keys and a lipstick clattered onto the polished floor. Mrs. Lodge snapped it shut abruptly, and her face flushed red with anger. She bent to grab the car keys, glaring coldly at the pack of kids now that they were nearly eye-to-eye. </p><p>“You’ve done enough damage to my Hiram. He never wants to see you again, he told me so. You’ve been nothing but bad friends to him. It’s time to put an end to this nonsense, right now. I don’t want you to ever come back.” </p><p>Alice had crouched to pick up the lipstick, and she offered it now to Mrs. Lodge with a tentative hand. Sonia Lodge ripped it out of her fingers and dropped it into the mouth of her purse as though it were poisoned, a vicious sneer overtaking her face. </p><p>“Oh, I’ve heard about you, Miss Smith. I’ve heard all about you.” She stepped closer to Alice, forcing her to take a step away from the safety of Fred’s shadow. Her lip curled with disgust as she drew the purse into her chest, bending down so that their faces were inches apart. Her eyes shone with malice, her voice lowered to a hiss. “I don’t want a dirty girl like you touching my son.” </p><p>Hal opened his mouth helplessly, frozen at the rear of the pack. FP’s eyes grew enormous behind the lenses of his glasses. Alice said nothing, but she had the expression of someone who had been abruptly slapped in the face. She stepped slightly behind Mary, who moved as if to hide her. </p><p>Downtrodden, soaked in sweat, still dusty from the ballfield, they followed Fred’s lead when he turned to leave. Hal cast a reproachful glance over his shoulder, thinking briefly and longingly of the things he would say to Hiram’s mother if he were braver, and then hastened to follow the others out the front door. FP hesitated for a moment as they picked up their bikes outside, looking worriedly at the line of first-floor windows that watched their departure with curtained, unseeing eyes. He opened his mouth as though to insist they stay - but as the others climbed onto their bikes and began to slowly pedal for home, he joined the rear of the pack in silence, his eyes turned uncharacteristically low to the pavement peeling away under his tires. </p>
<hr/><p>A strong feeling of victory stole through Sonia Lodge as she watched the group of kids leave. Those children were bad friends to her Hiram, she was certain about that, and she had gone to the hospital with a determination to put a stop to it before it could go on any further. Now it looked as though she had succeeded - not soon enough to protect her baby from this horrible thing that had happened, nor from the initial association with those awful children and that Smith girl - but soon enough to allay some of her worry about what would become of him if their frankly disturbing friendship continued. </p><p>A neighbour of theirs had once remarked that Sonia ought to be pleased her son had so many friends, what with all the horrible goings-on that were said to be the work of some sex fiend, that it would be safer for him to have other kids with him, and Sonia had icily removed that neighbour from her acquaintance. The thought of those awful children keeping her Hiram safe was a laugh - she had seen how the Andrews boy rode other kids double on that dangerous bike of his, how that fat boy was digging his grave with a spoon and fork, and that Jones child - well there was something that made her very unpleasantly nervous about him, something about the closeness with which he and her Hiram shared the hammock that had once swung in the garage. </p><p>She was only briefly startled when she walked back into Hiram’s hospital room and found her son sitting upright against the pillows, watching her not with the fuzzy, obedient daze that left him so sweet and vulnerable, but with an odd, alien awareness, as though someone else entirely had climbed into her son’s body and was watching her through the eye-holes of a mask. </p><p>“You made them leave,” said Hiram to her accusingly. “My friends.” </p><p>Her son’s sweet, trusting face had gone oddly hard. The starched sheet and thin blanket covering him settled around his thin, frail body like a shroud - yet the voice that came out of him was not a small child’s, but something shrewd and adult. Sonia crossed the room quickly to his side, and took his small hand in her own. </p><p>“You don’t need friends like that, Hiram. “If it hadn’t been for them, you’d be just fine right now.” Sonia swallowed down an emotional sob, and tucked the blankets securely around him, binding him tightly to the bed. “I know you’re upset now, Hiram, but one day you’ll understand. Now let’s take your medicine-” </p><p>“That’s not true. Marty Mantle broke my arm, I told you. You had no right to make them leave.” </p><p>Sonia was so shocked that she fell abruptly silent. No right! Was this how the Andrews boy talked to his parents at home? Or the farm kid - Sonia didn’t know his parents and didn't trust them. Any of them could have taught him this disrespect. </p><p>“Is this how you talk to your mother? I suppose you learned that from your so-called friends too.” Sonia began to cry, which usually worked wonders on getting her son to come around to her side. “They’re bad friends, honey, oh, I was so scared for you when they came. Hiram, you hurt me so much-” </p><p>“Stop it, Ma.” </p><p>She did stop, but only because she was so shocked by his tone that she stopped crying abruptly. Never in his life had her son spoken to her like that. This was more than something he had learned from those foul-mouthed so-called friends of his - this was a <em> sickness. </em> It was a side effect of the medication they had given him. It had to be. Her sweet boy would never talk to her like that. </p><p>“I won’t let you see them.” Sonia changed tactics, raising herself up to her full height and towering over her son. “I <em> won’t. </em>” </p><p>Hiram’s calm expression didn’t change. “Not while I’m in the hospital. But I’ll go home soon. The doctor said it was just a simple fracture and I can go home whenever I want. I heard him.” </p><p>“That doctor doesn’t know anything. You could lose all feeling in that arm, you know. You could become paralyzed. Why, little pieces of bone could be making their way through your bloodstream towards your heart, Hiram. I don’t mean to scare you, but it could <em> happen. </em>We’re going to go to Bangor, and get you a specialist, and--” </p><p>“No, <em> you </em>don’t know anything, Ma.” She was struck by the swelling anger in his voice - she had never heard Hiram talk like this before. “You know what this is? You know what these are?” He shook the prescription bottles from the Center Street Drug that had been placed on his nightstand by one of the nurses, and flung one across the room from his good arm in a fit of rage. </p><p>“THEY’RE GAZEBOS! THEY’RE BULLSHIT!” </p><p>Mrs. Lodge was so taken aback by this display that she could only gape. When she recovered her voice several moments had passed in silence, and yet Hiram’s stormy gaze had not abated, had still not been replaced by the trusting affection of the son she so adored. </p><p>“Who told you that?” she managed. Her throat was very dry, and panicked thoughts were swirling in her brain - it was too late, they had corrupted him after all, the short-haired girl and the filthy Jones boy, the slutty blonde with her long, curly hair. They had taken her innocent child away and replaced him with this stranger. </p><p>“Who do you think? Mr. Reyes. And I think he’s right. I think you knew all along and didn’t tell me. I think you wanted me to think I’m sick when I’m not.” </p><p>“Hiram!” Flustered, Sonia opened and closed her mouth several times before she recovered herself. “That Mr. Reyes is a horrible, horrible dirty man, and that girl of his is just as bad - look at what she’s done to your <em> arm, </em>baby, look what she wrote! There are names for girls like that, Hiram, girls like Alice Smith too, and I won’t have you associating with them. And that other girl is just as bad, wearing her hair like a boy, and those awful, awful boys-” </p><p>“I don’t care about that, Ma. They’re my friends.” She looked into his eyes and was briefly and abruptly terrified by what she saw - her son was furious with her. An inner strength crackled behind his stony expression like an electrical storm. </p><p>“They are not!” She yelled fearfully into the strange power that hung about her child’s face. “Would friends let those nasty boys break your arm? I know very well why they were after you, it was because of those awful friends of yours. I thought you wanted to have a <em> nice </em>summer, Hiram, I thought you wanted to build that soapbox racer you were always talking about.” </p><p>Hiram adored cars, and while Sonia never intended to allow him to do more than look at pictures of Cadillacs or one day drive her to whatever pharmacy they would choose to replace Mr. Reyes’ practice to pick up a prescription, she thought the mention of his soapbox racer might allay him slightly. He had begun building it earlier that spring for a science project using skateboard wheels and a peach crate, and it was to Sonia’s great relief that it never seemed to be coming together enough to actually be used. </p><p>But Hiram ignored this attempt to reach him. He looked at her accusingly, and Sonia felt a horrible shiver of fear. How could a mother be afraid of her own child? But there was something about him - something about his<em> eyes- </em></p><p>“You let my friends in the next time they come to see me.” Hiram swallowed painfully, and she moved instinctively towards the pitcher of water on his nightstand, but her son shook his head and she stopped as abruptly as if he were the parent and she was the child. “If you don’t, I think I’d want to know why. Why you and Mr. Reyes lied to me. Why you wanted me to think all this time that I was taking medicine when it was really just <em> bullshit. </em>” </p><p>Hearing that perverted word slip from her son’s lips crumbled Sonia’s resolve. “Hiram-” she pleaded. </p><p>“Because you’re supposed to protect me, Ma. That’s what you always say.” </p><p><em> I was! </em> She almost screamed. <em> I was protecting you, Hiram, that’s all I’ve ever done! </em>Because wasn’t it better to think you were sick than to really get sick? Wasn’t it better to trust your mother implicitly, because a mother always knew what was best for her child? Wasn’t the best medicine of all a mother’s love? </p><p>“Hiram-” she said again, pleadingly, terrified now. “Baby-” </p><p>“You let my friends in to see me when they come back,” Hiram repeated. His face had closed off entirely - a thundery stillness radiated from his pale skin, an odd, slate-grey light reflected in his cool eyes. One arm was strapped to his chest in a sling. “They’re good friends. I think that would be best.” </p><p>Sobbing, Sonia Lodge rose to her feet and fled the room. </p>
<hr/><p>They did come back, late that evening, and this time Hiram’s mother let them in. It helped that Artie Andrews had driven them, though what little paternal authority he held was tempered somewhat by the grief that sagged about the lines of his face. He sat silently and disinterestedly beside Sonia in the waiting room with a paperback while he waited for the six kids to finish their visit. Rain was building in the stormclouds above the hospital, threatening to open into a summer storm. The heat of the day hadn’t broken, and the air outside was heavy and damp with humidity. The town seemed empty and very still. </p><p>"Had a day, I guess," said Harry, looking at Hiram's bandaged arm. </p><p>“Boy, I wish Hermione Reyes would sign my cast,” said FP enviously. They were clustered around Hiram’s bedside, and FP had seated himself on the edge of the bed. Mary sat in the only chair, and the other stood in a semi-circle around her. </p><p>“She wrote that I’m a loser,” Hiram said. </p><p>“Yeah, but still.” FP was tracing the V that Hiram’s mother had inscribed in ballpoint over the S. “Did you at least look down her shirt when she did it?” </p><p>“How are you feeling, Hiram?” Hal’s voice was soft. He had his hands clasped somberly in front of the pouch of his sweatshirt, like a pallbearer at a funeral. Hiram looked into his soft face, and recognized with a jolt the kind of powerful stillness that came over Fred when he was pitching. </p><p>“All right,” he answered warily. He did not know it, but he was witnessing in Hal what his mother had seen in his own face only that afternoon: a stark and unmistakable power. </p><p>“We’re m-meeting at my h-house in a few d-days,” said Fred. “Suh-Sunday. Hal’s g-going to make the suh-silver b-balls. You should c-come if you c-can. But not if you’re too h-hurt.” </p><p>“I’m not,” said Hiram. He understood that Fred was talking about more than only his arm - that he was signing a verbal agreement more binding than any disagreement about taking turns in the clubhouse hammock. He looked in each of his friends’ faces and saw that they too were different - that the odd stillness in Hal’s expression had radiated through them all. It made them look older. The late summer light played over all of their faces, overlapping young and old in slices. </p><p>There was no going back. </p><p>“Alice is going to d-do it,” said Fred firmly, as though reading his mind. “Once we muh-make the a-ammo.” </p><p>There was nothing more to say about this - instead, they all only nodded, and after a solemn quiet began to talk about more mundane things: the baseball game, the movies showing at the Aladdin, how Mike Minetta wasn’t hanging around Marty so much anymore. Hiram felt a strong burst of love at their presence, and he was suddenly aware that before this summer he would have had no one who would have sat by his hospital bedside, no one whom he would have trusted as he did the six people that surrounded him. Sure, he and Fred and FP had hung around together, but it was different now. They <em> were </em> good friends - his mother had been wrong on that count. They were the best. </p><p>It was getting late: the light in the hospital room had darkened significantly. When Artie Andrews came to the doorway to collect them they rose one by one, following Fred’s lead. Fred paused at the doorway and offered Hiram a brave and tentative smile. Mary gave him a lopsided salute as she passed below Artie’s outstretched arm. </p><p>FP was the last to go. He rose from where he was sitting on the bed, and Hiram’s gaze fell to the plaster cast on his arm. FP had marked the V with red ink, going over each of the letters in turn, so that the cast now read LOVER. </p><p>“See you around, Hiram,” FP said, and pinched his cheek before he left.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. a word to the wise</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <em>
      <span>“We’re passing over, Eddie thought. Passing over into something new - we’re on the border. But what’s on the other side? Where are we going? Where?” - Stephen King, It</span>
    </em>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>
  <span>Fred’s parents left for the six-o-clock movie around five-thirty on Sunday. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was overcast that day, like the day they’d seen the werewolf. No breeze. The air was heavy with humidity, and it had been threatening showers since noon. Thunder rumbled low and distant, and the light slanted in dry puddles of gold on the deserted pavement. Despite the remaining hour until the curfew was in effect, the streets and parks of town had cleared out entirely by six-o-clock, when the Losers Club gathered once again in Fred’s garage on Witcham Street. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fred had carefully set up the monopoly board, and Mary was positioning it to look as though the game had been going on for some time, in case Fred’s parents came home and wanted to know what they had been doing. Hiram, his arm in a sling, was sitting by FP on an old sofa near the door. Hal had taken a seat at Artie Andrews’ worktable. He sat on a stool with a red vinyl seat, one foot propped up on the chrome rim beneath him and his face intent and focused. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hal turned on Artie Andrews’ desk lamp, and a circle of yellow light fell down onto the surface of the table. He examined the toolbox that Fred opened for him and the tools hanging on the wall and selected a few one by one, using a rag to wipe off the dust and grime that had accumulated from disuse. It was Fred who had decided that Hal would make the silver slugs, just as he had decided Alice would shoot the thing that lived in the sewers, and on this count, Fred was very confident that he had made the right decision. Watching Hal handle each implement with almost off-handed confidence, as steady and certain as the day they had built the dam in the Barrens, he felt a comforting surety that on this count, at least, their plan was a favorable one. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Have you got the molds?” Hal asked, selecting a small chisel from the wall of pegs above the workbench. Fred retrieved them from a shopping bag and set them on the table - two small circular steel bearing molds that he and FP had bought at the Kitchener Precision Tool &amp; Die earlier in the week. After having decided that they would be using slugs instead of bullets, Hal had gone to the library and feverishly researched the process of making ball bearings. Though he had no more experience than what he had gleaned from books, the others stood eagerly back from him, looking warily and expectantly at the array of items laid out on the worktable: a shallow metal plate, a vice, a propane torch, the chisel, and a homemade funnel that Hal had made himself. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>More surprisingly, Hal found that he did know what he was doing. His focus on the process to be completed in the circle of yellow light was so intense that even Alice’s presence at his right elbow faded somewhat into the background, replaced by an intent sense of self-assurance that was becoming more and more familiar to him as the summer wore on towards August. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hand me that torch,” he said, and Fred put it in his hand. Hal placed the metal plate in the grip of the vice and tightened it until it was snug. In this dish he placed a real silver dollar, retrieving it from the pocket of his khaki shorts and running his thumb over the surface of it before setting it down. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Your dad gave you that, didn’t he, Hal?” Alice asked quietly. Her long hair tickled his arm, and for a brief moment Hal was an eleven-year-old with a crush again: his face turned slightly pink, and he wished briefly for the courage to tell her that for her safety he would melt down every bit of silver there was to be found in the whole state of Maine. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes,” he admitted instead, “but I don’t remember him really well. This is more important.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are you sure?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sure,” said Hal easily, and smiled at her. From the workbench he pulled on a thick pair of Bunny Andrews’ gardening gloves, snapping the cuffs onto his arms as seriously as a surgeon. The sight of him with pink flowered gloves that went up to his pudgy elbows ought to have set FP off into at least a dozen wisecracks, and for a moment Alice waited impatiently for him to pipe up with some joke so she could tell him off, but FP said nothing. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hal barely seemed to notice what he was wearing. He selected a pair of protective glasses and wrapped the strap around his head, then turned the propane torch to the dish and slowly began to heat up the silver. They watched as the surface of the silver dollar began to slacken, squinting into the brightness of the stream of light. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Got that funnel?” Hal asked after several moments had passed. The dish below the torch’s flame was glowing a strong green-gold, and a steady stream of fire hissed into the bowl. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Here,” said Harry, and held it out. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Alice, you’ve got steady hands,” Hal directed. He was so absorbed in his work that he could now talk to her without blushing. “Put the funnel in the mold. But put a pair of gloves on so you don’t get burned.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alice took the gardening gloves that Fred passed her and pulled them purposefully onto her wrists. She slid the tip of the funnel into one of the bearing molds, and held it carefully in place. Hal watched the silver melt in the dish, hearing only the muted roar of the propane torch that filled the small garage. After two minutes, he handed the torch abruptly to Fred. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s ready,” Hal said. He stripped off one glove abruptly and turned the vice lever until the dish tipped, his fingers working precisely as he steadied it with his gloved hand. Alice held the funnel and bearing mold out below the dish. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hold it steady, Alice.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You worry about yourself, Hal Cooper,” she said. “It’s steady.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hal gave the lever one last crank and tilted the dish over the funnel. They all watched a delicate stream of molten silver run into the hole in the bearing mold. The liquid silver looked like a single thread of cobweb. Hal poured it directly into the hole of the funnel without spilling a drop. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Harry, put a nail in the spout of the funnel so the silver doesn’t harden and seal it,” Hal said calmly. In his voice, the presence of the grown man he would be in some twenty-seven years was already apparent. For a moment he felt wholly and wonderfully adult too - not the fat kid with gardening gloves on his hands who was called Tits at school, but someone handsome and capable, someone who really could save the world and everyone in it. “We have one more to go. Fred, give me the other mold. I have to reheat the silver. Mary, the torch.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mary handed it to him and they repeated the process, Alice holding the next bearing mold as steadily as the first. When they had filled both molds, they set them side by side on the worktable to harden. Hal clicked off the light. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Now what?” FP asked. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We play Monopoly for an hour.” Hal took off the gardening gloves with the purposeful air of a doctor who had just successfully delivered a baby. “It’ll take that long for them to harden. I’ll take ‘em out by cracking the molds open along the seam with that chisel. Then Alice can take them home until it’s time to use them.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not me,” Alice spoke up suddenly. She twisted her hands together in front of her blouse, and glanced sideways at Fred. “If my dad sees them, he’ll be mad.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You haven’t got a hiding spot or something?” Harry asked, and Alice blushed. She did have a hiding spot - it was currently occupied by a sweet postcard with a photo of Sweetwater River on the front and a haiku on the back - but she didn’t want the silver slugs in her bedroom. It was hard to explain, but she felt superstitiously as though the longer she kept them away from her, the less likely it would have to be her who shot the monster in the end. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” she said. “You keep them, Fred.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“A-All r-right,” said Fred, without a fight. He glanced at the game board. “Anyone w-want to puh-play?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They all looked at Hal and then at the game board, and seeing there was nothing left to be done, sat down in a circle around the game of Monopoly, pulling up milk crates and folding chairs. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll be a moment,” Alice said, glancing at the door that led into the Andrews house. “I’ve got to call my dad. I promised I would. And no one follow me and make noise, or I’ll be in big trouble.” This last was for FP’s benefit, who had a habit of making obscene noises next to the speaker whenever one of them used a phone. He flashed Alice a wink, but didn’t follow her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hal watched her go, noticing how the gold light spilling forth from the Andrews hallway backlit her hair briefly, raising a gold corona around her head and shoulders. When she stepped up from the concrete stair into the house, the leg of her baggy jeans drew up around her ankle just enough for a flash of her ankle bracelet to shine through. When he came back into himself from this revelation, Alice was gone, and the others were clustered around the monopoly board, looking strangely at him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re losing it, buddy,” said FP when Hal finally joined him at the board. He made a great show of shaking the dice, his hands held high aloft as though in prayer. When he finally threw them, he landed a one and a two. Hiram and Mary both delighted in ribbing him about it for the next ten minutes. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Inside, in the small foyer that connected the garage to the Andrews kitchen, Alice held the white corded phone against her ear. Her father had picked up immediately, quashing her secret hope that he would sleep through the phone ringing. He had listened patiently to her rehearsed fib about how Hermione Reyes’ parents would drive her home from the community centre in an hour’s time, and his silence on the other end of the phone was somehow more frightening than if he had accused her outright of a lie Alice’s pulse was beating very hard in her wrists, and she wondered briefly if he could hear it through the phone. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You aren’t with boys, are you Ally?” Her father asked at last. “There’s only one thing boys want from you, you know that.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” Alice lied - the boldest lie of her life. In fact, she was alone in a house with five boys, two of whom she would not have minded at all if they had wanted to kiss her. Maybe, then, her father’s suspicions were right - maybe she was a bad girl after all. “No boys, Daddy.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are you being a good girl, Ally?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She shivered - there was no reason for her father’s voice to cause her to shiver like that, and yet it cut through her as violently and as horribly as a cold knife through glass. Alice’s voice was barely a hoarse croak when she forced herself to speak. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes, Daddy.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“They found another dead boy, Ally. Did you know that? A boy named Jimmy Cullum.” Her father paused. “I worry about you, Ally. You know I worry a lot.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know,” Alice whispered. “I’ll be home soon, Daddy. I love you.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Bye, Ally.” He hung up. Alice felt a great swooping relief, and just as quickly, a warm flood of shame for having felt it. She went back down the garage steps. Her friends were sitting around the Monopoly board - FP and Mary had begun an animated quarrel about who had stolen from who, and Harry was looking on in amusement. Hiram was counting out his money with his one good hand. Hal and Fred were sitting next to one another, so close that their shoulders touched when one of them reached for a card. They glanced up at the same time, as if they had felt her looking at them. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fred’s eyes were wide and brown; Hal’s very calm and very blue. Alice walked around the board and knelt down next to Fred, glancing briefly at the hand that was moving a small silver racecar around the spaces. He had lovely strong hands, and it gave her a private shiver to look at them. Hal stared fixedly at the freckled lobe of her ear, and then looked quickly away. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They played Monopoly for an hour. When the molds had cooled, Hal opened them neatly with Artie Andrews’ chisel and removed the slugs they had made. He held the two small silver balls up for the group’s inspection, and then passed them to FP, who was closest. FP looked startled to be handed them and handed them quickly to Fred.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fred passed one to Harry, and one to Alice, who held it up to the light. It was heavy and warm in her hand. She imagined placing it in the cup of the Bullseye and drawing back the thick elastic, aiming at the face of the monster that could take the shape of any of their worst fears. She still didn’t think she would have the guts to fire it when the time came, but Fred clearly thought that she would. It made her feel oddly warm to know that, although it scared her too. You couldn’t say no to Fred, that was all. None of them could. And though Alice knew she was too young to love a boy, too young to have anything but what Hermione and her friends termed in their girlish, frivolous way as a </span>
  <em>
    <span>crush</span>
  </em>
  <span> - she thought that she loved him all the same. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She handed the silver bearing to Mary, and the balls went around the circle, scrutinized by seven pairs of eyes. Finally Fred slid them both into the pocket of his denim shorts and turned to face the group. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“C-Come on,” he said. “We have t-to c-clean up the s-stuff we u-used. Or my d-dad will be p-p-p-pissed.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>When he finally spat out the word, FP made an exaggerated show of wiping his face. “Do you give towels with your showers, Freddie, or do I have to pay extra?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They all laughed, and the tension seemed to ease from the air a bit. Fred and Hal put Artie’s tools away from where they had come and wiped the desk clean. Mary cleaned up the Monopoly board and put the money back in the bank. They had settled down for a second game when Fred’s parents' car swung into the driveway, the growl of tires of pavement announcing their arrival. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They heard Artie and Bunny Andrews unlock the front door and walk through the house. Finally, the door between the garage and the inner hall opened, and Fred’s parents stepped into the garage. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’ve got a whole empty house, and you kids want to play in here,” Artie said, but any attempt at cheer did not reach his eyes. It was his normal speaking voice, but it was hollow somehow - not the dry emptiness of Alice’s father’s but the small and lonely cadence of someone lost in his own home. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How was the show?” Mary asked politely, looking up from where she was sorting five-hundred-dollar bills. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It was nice,” Bunny replied, in a voice that suggested she had seen none of it. She looked around at Fred’s friends and smiled thinly. “Did you kids have fun?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They all nodded. Alice noticed how far Artie stood from his wife, the car keys still dangling from his hand. They did not seem to belong to the same family, perhaps not even the same world. The shaft of light from inside the house fell between them, and she thought they seemed fainter than usual, their colours washed out like the bloodstains on her rags in the Klean Kloze - almost like ghosts. </span>
</p><p><span>“Come on,” Artie said to his son, nodding towards the driveway. He looked at the circle of kids and felt an unusual apprehension take hold of him. What he did not say, the thing Fred’s father had almost begun to ask about, was that there was a strange and frightening heaviness</span> <span>in the air around his son and his friends - something raw and alive that sizzled from person to person like static electricity. He wondered briefly, and then pushed his misgivings aside. The sky was promising rain, and this was surely some odd effect of the storm gathering above Riverdale. Nothing more than that. “I’ll take you kids home.” </span></p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>Rain swelled in the clouds overnight, which moved low and pregnant to cover the gaps in the elms until no trace of sky was left, but it did not fall. The humidity rose to a sweltering pitch, temperatures soaring even overnight, and the town slept with windows thrown open and air conditioners buzzing in the homes prosperous enough to afford them. Hal lay awake in his bedroom, his face turned to the window screen, listening to the opera of cicadas in the neighbouring yards. The air was still and acrid with anticipation, the occasional flash of heat lighting illuminating the rooftops beyond the trees. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>On the south end of town, Alice Smith woke abruptly from a nightmare, swallowing a scream that rose violently and frantically in her throat. At the same moment, Harry Clayton sat up in his farmhouse room, his breath coming in hard spurts as though he had been running. He stared out the high attic window and saw only the swelling mass of clouds that had covered the moon, blotting out all light. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>In his own bedroom, Hiram lay with pain pulsing through his broken arm. The fracture hurt badly, all the way down to the muscle, and there was an awful taste in his mouth, like camphor and electrical wire. He felt breathless, his lungs heavy and weak, but he did not move for his inhaler, which lay on his side table, glowing white as bone in the pale stormlight. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>FP dreamed restlessly all night, slipping in and out of fuzzy and colourful visions that pursued him doggedly to the precipice of waking and back into unconsciousness. Mary came awake with a start, shoving back her covers and wondering what had frightened her awake even as she shook the nightmare purposefully from her mind. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fred never slept. Whenever he shut his eyes, he saw Oscar as he had seen him that day in October, dressed for the rain in his yellow slicker, a newspaper boat cradled in one hand. Now he stared fixedly at the glowing numbers on his alarm clock, losing himself intently in their cyan phosphorescence, suddenly afraid, as his brother had been for all six years of his short life, of the dark. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>His blinds were open, and a flash of lightning illuminated Witcham Street black and still in the night. The rattling branches of an elm tree reached bony fingers towards his windowsill, mimicking the sound of pattering raindrops, enough to fool him briefly into thinking the rain had come. The clouds shifted shapelessly in one great mass above the trees. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He th-th-” Fred tried in a whisper, and then was silent. The phrase swam in his brain, mocking him. He felt briefly certain that if he had spoken it successfully aloud prior to last October, Oscar would not have died. The thought was ridiculous, but to succumb to its tempting logic was irresistible. Fred stared into the alarm clock glow, which swam before his eyes into a smeary halo of light, feeling the loss of his brother as though it were new, feeling his own eleven-year-old’s heart pounding away in his chest, feeling a crazy and senseless exhilaration at the certainty of the black road that lay ahead of them, leading them deeper into the dark. </span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>It did not rain overnight. In the morning of July 24th, faint gold stormlight rose heavy and dim on the roads and fields, the clouds darker and lower-hanging than ever. People went swiftly and silently about their errands, or put off work for another day and stayed huddled indoors. Basements had been battened down against flooding, and the darkened streets lay empty and silent below the stormy gray sky. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Despite the distance from the farmhouse and the threat of rain, Harry went directly into town when Fred called. The note of urgency that he had heard in his friend’s voice over the phone was too pressing to ignore. When he pulled up to the Tracker Brothers Trucking Depot on his bike, he saw Hiram arriving at the broad brick building on foot, his broken arm still strapped to his chest. FP was with him, walking his own bike slowly by the handlebars. Harry called out a greeting, and FP returned it. Hiram’s face was thin and pale, and his brow was damp in evident pain - yet clearly that too hadn’t been enough to dissuade him from coming. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You know why we’re here?” FP asked when Harry got closer, shoving his glasses up his nose. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, he didn’t say.” Harry looked hopefully at Hiram. “You?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hiram shook his head. A low rumble of thunder came from somewhere above their heads, the clouds hanging dark and menacing above the row of brick warehouses. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They went around the far side of the building to the ballfield, walking their bikes, and found the others already there. A breeze had picked up at last, and wind buffeted the patchy scrub grass towards the group of young kids standing among the ruts of the basepaths. The clouds moved silently and ominously overhead in a gradual westward march. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I came back to get my bat,” Fred explained quietly when they were near enough to hear. “T-This was there.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The seven of them stood on the scruffy baseball diamond, facing the brick wall that made the rear side of the Tracker Brothers building. Thunder boomed directly overhead, and the first few drops of rain began to fall. In enormous red letters, scrawled in what looked unmistakably like blood, two lines had been written across the brick in a spiky, unnatural hand: </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>STOP NOW BEFORE I KILL YOU ALL</b>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>A WORD TO THE WISE FROM YOUR FRIEND PENNYWISE</b>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The clouds suddenly opened as fiercely as a turned tap. Packed dirt turned to mud, running down the backs of their dirty knees and along the blemished surface of home base. The rain came harder now, sleeting into their faces, but the words written on the building did not smear or run. Their stark crimson almost seemed to glow through the gloom, as luminescent as a stoplight. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fred was advancing across the field towards the message. “W-We’re g-going to k-kill you!” he screamed. Thunder boomed over the sound of his words, and Harry felt a brief and paralyzing surge of helplessness. Wind threw a gust of cold rain into his eyes, and he blinked rapidly to clear them. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fred come back!” FP yelled. “Come back!” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>FP tried to follow him, and Hal pulled him back by his arm. They stood helplessly in a line, watching Fred walk alone into the storm. Water plastered his hair down to his head, making him look very young and very small. Fred was screaming into the driving rain. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You killed my brother, you son of a bitch! You bastard! We’re going to fucking kill you! Come out! Come out and try us!” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hail began to scatter along the ground, white stones about the size of loose gravel that blew about their ankles and rose small welts on their exposed skin. Hiram yelped and held his broken arm to his chest as hailstones smashed into his cast. FP stepped in front of him to shield him with his body, his back turned to the hail and wind. He turned to look over his shoulder to keep Fred in sight, and the lenses of his glasses, blinded by rain, flashed like two white, empty eyes. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fred, come back!” Alice screamed, her voice high and frightened over the wind. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Let’s see you come out now, you fucker!” Fred screamed. His small hands were curled into fists. The rain collected in his wet sneakers and the hollows of his collarbone, the hail whipping stinging projectiles at his bare legs and arms. The wind buffeted his shirt out behind him like a torn sail. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He doesn’t know, </span>
  </em>
  <span>FP thought. </span>
  <em>
    <span>He doesn’t know that he doesn’t always stutter. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>The words had begun to run at last, thick streaks of blood covering the Tracker Brothers building in a film of gore. Fred turned away and began to walk back towards his friends across the field. Mary had to grab his arm to keep him from walking past, back into the thicket of trees that lead down into the Barrens. He was crying, the tears mixing with the rain down his face. He was shaking badly, and when Harry touched his arm he could hear Fred’s ragged breath coming in great heaving spurts. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey,” said Harry softly, and held Fred’s cheek next to his own, wrapping a steadying arm around his shoulder. Fred sobbed. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s okay,” Mary said, and lay her hand against Fred’s cheek. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s okay, Fred,” Hal echoed. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah,” said FP, who had wiped messy streaks over the soaked lenses of his glasses. “No one’s gonna chicken out. Are we, guys?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” said Hiram solemnly. He looked very small in the rain. “No one.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fred looked up, wiping his eyes. They were all soaked to the skin, rain beading on their wet hair and running in rivulets down their calves and necks. Water poured from the sodden pouch of Hal’s sweatshirt. “H-H-Help me,” Fred said, sobbing. “P-P-P-Please. H-Help m-m-me.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We will,” said Alice, and put her arms tightly around him. She was unprepared for how thin he was, how sharply the point of his shoulder dug into her breast. Her arms encircled his whole body without trying. FP held him tightly from the other side, and Harry wrapped them both in a warm protective shield, his back to the rain. Mary put her arms over Fred and Alice and laid her head on Alice’s shoulder, while Hiram wrapped his one good arm around FP. Hal placed one arm around Harry and Fred, completing the chain. They huddled together as one unit, some strong and living animal with many heads. The hail battered their bodies like solid snow. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They stood hugging as a group as the sky emptied over their heads, the hail sheeting towards them in great gusts, the gravel and dirt of the ballfield sinking slowly under their feet as the water turned the diamond to mud. </span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>They got to 29 Neibolt Street around ten the next morning. There was no trace of the rain that had poured the day before: the morning was bright and clear, resplendent with summer heat. Sun shone in the broken windows and through the trees, bringing heat up from the cracked and rutted pavement. The sunflowers that stood sentry by the fence were more wilted than ever, many of their petals lost to the storm so that only their gnarled faces remained. The dead black roses were still scattered outward from the skirting under the porch. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fred got there first, riding FP behind him on Silver. Hal and Harry joined them next, arriving at Neibolt Street on their own bikes from opposite directions. Mary and Hiram came on foot. For a frightening moment, Mary was quite sure Alice would not come - that the responsibility of the slingshot would have scared her into abandoning them. But Alice rode up a moment later on her girl’s bike, her long blonde hair pushed back into a green headband and Fred’s Bullseye in her wicker bike basket, and Mary felt ashamed for having doubted her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How’s your arm, Hiram?” Hal asked. They all looked at the plaster cast with the red writing on it. For a moment a spike of disorienting uncertainty drove through Hal’s heart. His logical mind screamed that they were crazy - that this was a job for grown-ups, not seven kids, and one with a broken arm to boot. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>But it’s not grown-ups it’s killing, </span>
  </em>
  <span>he thought. </span>
  <em>
    <span>It’s kids. Kids like Ronnie Grogan and Betty Ripsom and Oscar. So we have to stop it. Goddamn it, we have to. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not so bad,” Hiram answered. “Just hurts when I roll on it if I’m sleeping. And the other night it hurt like hell for some reason. But it’s okay now.” He looked around at the others. “Who’s got the slugs?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fred produced them from the pocket of his jean shorts. He handed them to Alice, who looked warily at them and slipped them in her front pocket. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Let’s go,” she said quickly. “Before I chicken out.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Buck-awk!” said FP solemnly, producing a very feeble chicken imitation that made Mary giggle. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They turned to face the house. It hadn’t gotten any better looking than the last time around, FP thought, and his breath caught a little in his throat as the memory twitched in his mind. A cool rush of fear ran down his back, and he shivered badly, almost biting his tongue. The werewolf’s jacket had had his name on it, and suppose that wasn’t all? Suppose the house wanted him more than anyone else? Suppose by nightfall his mom was putting up Missing Child posters with his face on them? </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>One way to get famous, </span>
  </em>
  <span>he thought, and laughed uneasily under his breath. His heart was beating very hard. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“A-Are you g-going to be o-okay, FP?” Fred asked. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Si, Senor,” FP replied, though his mouth was very dry. The words came out little more than a whisper. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They shuffled towards the decaying front porch in a pack. Mary stayed a little farther than the rest, loitering on the battered square paving stones that made a path through the weeds. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Shouldn’t we have some people keep watch?” Mary asked. “Just in case something bad happens?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fred glanced around. He was already on the porch. “Who w-wants to stay out here?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Everyone raised their hands except Fred and Alice. Even Harry lifted his arm weakly before seeing the others voting and tucking his thumbs quickly into his belt. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hiram should stay,” FP said, pushing his glasses up his nose before Fred’s betrayed gaze could land on him. “I mean, he’s only got one fucking arm, look at the guy.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” said Hiram in a small voice, and they all turned to look at him in surprise. Hiram was very pale, but he shook his head quickly back and forth. “Not this time. If you guys go, I go too.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Silence followed this proclamation, and the other six regarded Hiram with wary respect. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know how to do it,” Alice said, and stooped to break off some twigs from a withered dogwood shrub that grew close to the steps. One of the sticks was longer than the others, and she shoved it down into her closed fist so that they protruded to the same length. There were seven. “Long straw stays.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They looked at one another in uneasy consensus, and then Fred nodded. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You guys are lucky we aren’t measuring dicks.” said FP. He took a straw quickly and held it up for their inspection. It was broken neatly in half. “Fuck!” he exclaimed, and then glanced guiltily at Fred. “Sorry, Fred.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Your turn,” said Alice to Hiram. He took a twig, holding it up so they could see it was short. A look of nausea and fright was on his features, but his jaw was set and resolute. Mary glanced sideways at him, and then grabbed a straw. It was short. Her shoulders slumped in dismay. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hal took a twig and held it up so they could see it was broken. “I’m guh-going a-anyway,” Fred said, his face grave, but he drew all the same. It was short. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Swallowing hard, Harry deliberated over the last two straws before pulling one. It slid easily out of Alice’s fist, shorter than his index finger. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I g-guess it’s yuh-you, Alice,” Fred said, but Alice opened her fist to show that her straw was also broken. They all clustered together, holding the dogwood branches against each other to gauge which was longest. All seven were identical in length. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Is this a trick?” Mary asked warily. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I didn’t,” Alice said honestly. She looked about herself as though the longer straw would suddenly appear, and the righteous and flabbergasted anger in her tone was enough to convince them. Her voice pitched up in conviction. “I swear I didn’t.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They all stood, looking at each other uneasily. For a moment FP felt quite sure that that would be the end of it - that they would go home from here, calling goodbye to each other as they raised the kickstands of their bikes, and they would never talk about it again. He was shocked to feel how distressed he was at the possibility: he felt certain that any chance they had at getting to It for Fred’s sake was now shrinking. </span>
  <em>
    <span>There are seven of us,</span>
  </em>
  <span> he thought. </span>
  <em>
    <span>That’s how it’s supposed to be. That’s how it </span>
  </em>
  <span>has</span>
  <em>
    <span> to be. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“I </span>
  <em>
    <span>didn’t</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” said Alice again, to no one, and they all looked at Fred. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You don’t h-have to c-come with me,” Fred said. It was somewhat of a relief to say this, a release of some of the guilt that had tugged at the back of his mind since they had stood hugging in the storm. Oscar </span>
  <em>
    <span>hadn’t</span>
  </em>
  <span> been their brother. He stood slightly above them, his red shirt a bright blotch against the dark siding of the old house. “Yuh-You can go on puh-pretending like everyone else in this t-town. But I c-can’t.” His brown eyes seemed to burn into FP’s heart. He struggled to spit out the word. “I cuh-cuh-</span>
  <em>
    <span>can’t.</span>
  </em>
  <span>” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alice stepped up to the porch. As she did so, she threw aside the dogwood twig and reflexively touched the Bullseye she had tucked into the back pocket of her jeans. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I love you, Fred,” she said simply, her confession pure and genuine in the soft summer light. “I’m coming.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Silence for a moment, and then Harry threw his own twig on the ground and stepped up alongside them. “I love you, Fred,” he said, facing him. He looked around at the rest of them, standing in the knee-high weeds beyond the Neibolt Street fence with the sun beating down on their heads. Harry smiled, and his face glowed with it. “I love all of you. I really do.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I guess I love you too,” said Hiram, stepping onto the rickety porch step. He slit his eyes quickly at FP. “And I already said I was going.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I love you, Fred.” said Hal. He blushed when he said it, but offered him a smile that was sweet and heartbreaking on his chubby face. He stepped up onto the porch and held onto the railing. “I never had friends like you before. Any of you.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>This selfless confession was followed by silence. Now it was only Mary and FP standing on the path. They did not look at each other, but they were aware of each other’s presence, the hesitancy burning between them like a fire. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I love you, Fred,” Mary said suddenly, and threw away her straw. Her voice was hoarse, but no one would have doubted the honesty in her words. She stepped next to Hal and reached quite unexpectedly for Fred’s hand. “I’m with you guys.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Everyone looked at FP. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I guess I love you or something,” FP mumbled. He wouldn’t meet Fred’s eyes. “Fuck it.” He stepped onto the lower step of the porch, which sagged so low in the middle that tufts of dandelion were growing up through the plane of wood. He took a deep breath. He still did not look at Fred, but he was blushing, and spoke quickly as though to distract from it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Let’s kill this fucking clown.” </span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. alice smith takes a shot</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <em> “If you go first and that thing jumps you, what do I do?” Beverly asked. “Shoot through you?” </em>
  </p>
  <p>
    <em><br/>“If y-you have to,” Bill said. But I suh-suh-suggest you try guh-hoing a-around, first.” - Stephen King, It.  </em>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>They went in this order: Fred, Alice and FP flanking him on either side, Hal close behind with Hiram holding onto his shirtsleeve with his good hand, then Mary in the rear with Harry behind her. Their sneakers crunched on the decaying layer of dead leaves that carpeted the hall. The front door had not been locked - indeed had not even been properly closed. It had swung inward almost before the touch of Fred’s hand. </p><p>The sunlight in here was odd and yellow, filtered through a thick layer of grime that covered the window panes. When the door shut, the hall was bathed in a dim globe-like light that was something like being inside of a streetlamp. It made Harry think of insects he had seen at the Riverdale Museum, trapped under amber. He turned to look over his shoulder and saw their bikes out the front hall window, seemingly the size of dollhouse bikes where they lay haphazardly on the lawn. The front yard felt suddenly far away, as though he were looking out the wrong end of a telescope. The dirty glass seemed disorientingly thick, like the yellow plexiglass that divided compartments of a submarine, some kind of translucent optical illusion. </p><p>Alice held the Bullseye by the leather cup, the Y swinging down on its thick sheaves of elastic. She paused and loaded one of the bearings into the cup, concealing it in her hand as she walked. Her spine was ramrod-straight, her blonde curls tumbling almost to the backs of her thighs. In the long strands of gold, thin tendrils of yellow sunlight caught and glittered like insects in a web. </p><p>“Smells like Hiram’s mom’s underwear in here,” said FP. </p><p>“Shut up, FP.” </p><p>There <em> was </em> a smell - something thick and moldy, the smell of intense decay. Cobwebs crisscrossed the walls in great filthy webs. Fred halted suddenly and kicked at something among the leaves. He turned it over with the toe of his shoe. It was a single white clown glove, filmy with dirt and grime. When Hiram saw it he immediately blasted hard on his inhaler, making them all jump. </p><p>“Cuh-come on,” said Fred, and led them further into the hall. The floorboards protested in loud squeals when they walked. FP felt something grab his shirt and gasped breathlessly, but it was only Mary, who had drawn up so close behind him that she was stepping on his ankles. Her hand was fisted in the back of his T-shirt, and she didn’t let go. </p><p>They reached an open door and stepped into a dirty kitchen. What had once been a linoleum floor was warped and yellowed with water damage and age, rising in stale ripples under their feet like dead, callused skin. A number of fist-sized holes had been plunged into the walls, and great swaths of green mold decorated the wallpaper. Something wet and black was dripping above the hole where a stove had once been, and it oozed in long tendrils down to the baseboards. </p><p>“F-Fred?” FP asked shakily, and they all turned at the abnormal softness of his voice. </p><p>One section of deteriorating cabinet had been papered over by stained and yellowed Missing Child flyers, forming an enormous collage on the kitchen wall. The seven of them had grown so used to the sight and texture of such notices that they had somehow not remarked at all at this morbid choice of decor. The flyers had been papered many times end-to-end, the way a concert would be advertised on a city corner. In the holes where swaths of paper had been torn away, a second layer of copies, older and more yellow than the first, showed through the gaps. </p><p>It was the names and faces of all of the children who had gone missing. Hiram stared at them and recognized a disturbing number of his classmates, children with whom he had gone to church and played baseball, children who had paper routes on his block and blocks surrounding, children with whom he had messed around in the schoolyard and the alley behind the drugstore when he had nothing better to do. BETTY RIPSOM, MATTHEW GROGAN, EDDIE CORCORAN, JIMMY CULLUM - and more, dozens more, so many names and faces that the scope of the thing left them all briefly speechless. Some photos looked decidedly out of date, long-ago missing kids in quiffs and duck tails that must have been popular when their parents were young. And in the middle, indistinguishable from the rest in condition and age, repeated some dozen times, a face in coke-bottle glasses that was identical to the face of the boy standing before the display. </p><p>
  <strong>FP JONES</strong>
</p><p>FP reached towards the wall and peeled one down. It came easily, great sticky tendrils of adhesive blistering away from the place where the rotting paper had been joined to the wall. The look of pure fright on his face made it unrecognizable - his skin had gone the color of plaster, his lips bloodless and his cheeks smoothed out in fear. </p><p>“It’s me,” he said, and his voice shook. The dissolving paper trembled in his grip. “It’s me, Fred.” </p><p>Fred shook his head fiercely and walked across the kitchen. “N-N-No-” </p><p>“It’s my name!” FP sobbed. He dropped the flyer, which drifted lightly to the floor in an invisible draft and landed face-up before them. In the gap left by the flyer’s removal, a second copy showed through. There were tears in his voice. “It wants me. It was my name on the werewolf’s jacket, and it’s my name on the wall, and it wants me-” </p><p>“Look at me, FP, look at me!” Fred grabbed both his hands and held them tightly. FP pulled back instinctively before freezing. His eyes were wide and wet, his cheeks damp with tears behind his glasses. Fred squeezed his hands. “It’s not real. It’s puh-playing t-tricks on you.” </p><p>FP stared at him. Fred held his hands tightly. </p><p>“It’s not real,” Fred repeated soothingly. “You’re n-not missing. It’s not ruh-real.” </p><p>“It’s n-not real,” FP repeated, and then giggled weakly when he realized he’d stuttered. They all looked at the sheet of paper on the dirty floor. It had gone blank. </p><p>Suddenly, something sprang out of the darkness of the deep sink, causing Hiram to shriek and reel back into the wall. It was an enormous black rat the size of a small dog. Fred dropped FP’s hands in fright. Alice screamed and aimed the Bullseye at it, drawing the elastic back in a smooth, practiced jerk. </p><p>“NO!” shouted Fred. Alice turned in a panic to face him, and he saw a light of something leave her eyes. For a moment she blinked bewilderedly at him, and then a look of uncertain fear took over her face. The rat scuttled away down the hole of the pipe, the sound of its tiny skittering claws echoing on the metal. Its tail had been gnarled and chewed, shredded as though it had been eaten through. </p><p>“It wanted me to shoot it,” Alice said in a dumbfounded voice. “I swear to God, Fred. It <em> wanted </em> me to.” </p><p>“Sh-Sure,” said Fred. “It wuh-wants us to w-waste the suh-slugs. But we’re suh-smarter than it.” He looked around at the others, who stood in an uncertain huddle near the derelict refrigerator. Alice shook her head and tried to push the slingshot back into his hand. </p><p>“I can’t do this, Fred. I’ll mess it up. You should do it.” </p><p>Fred refused to take it. “It’s suh-supposed t-to be you,” he said firmly. “I can f-feel it.” </p><p>“Boy, I just love this,” said FP hoarsely as Alice took the slingshot back. “When you run with Freddie you get your chucks every day.” </p><p>No one laughed. Mary reflexively touched the book she kept tucked in her back pocket. It was M.K. Handley’s Guide to North American Birds, and she had carried it everywhere with her since the incident in the Standpipe. For a moment, an instant of doubt rippled between the group like a catching flame. Why had they come into Its house with nothing but two silver slugs and a slingshot? What exactly were they hoping for? </p><p>It was Hal who interrupted it before it could gain traction. “Come on,” he said, resting one of his large hands on FP’s shoulder. “We might as well keep going.” </p><p>They followed Fred out of the kitchen and into a dim room that might have been a parlour. This room seemed much too big, bigger than should have been possible for a house as this one appeared from the street. The ceiling was huge, taller than a ballroom. Hal’s head turned from side to side as he walked, trying to orient himself, but the orange sun slanting in the scummy windows was no help. It seemed to come from everywhere at once. The angles were all wrong, the perspective erratic. The room stretched as long as a football field ahead of him. The others were far away, but they seemed to grow larger instead of smaller, moving seemingly uphill into the orange light. </p><p><em> It’s here alright, </em> thought Hal. <em> This is one of those places, like the Morlock holes. Places where It goes out and comes back in. Maybe this was just an old house once, but now it’s part of It.  </em></p><p>“Hal!” Mary suddenly called. She had turned to look back, and her eyes widened with fear when she saw how far away he was. </p><p>Hal ran to catch up. It seemed that he was running for a long time, though all seven of them were still in the same room. Behind him, he heard the abrupt echoing slam of a closing door. Something fluttered against the back of his neck, and he skidded on a drift of filthy leaves and ran headlong into Harry’s back. When he turned to look behind him there was nothing there but a square of dirty light on the floor, but something had been. He was sure. To Hal the thing that had slipped over his neck felt like the bandages a mummy would wear. </p><p>He grabbed Harry’s bicep, and Harry grabbed his forearm and held on tight. Hal was gasping, sweat pooling on his back and under his arms as though he had run a marathon, though when he looked behind him the opposite wall was no more than six feet away. The door through which they had come was firmly closed. <em> A draft closed it, </em>Hal told himself uselessly, though he knew it hadn’t been. The air in the parlour was as still and stale as that of a crypt. </p><p>“You scared me,” Mary said. She looked around at the others, her face very pale. “He looked small. Like he was miles away.” </p><p>“Suh-stay cuh-close,” Fred warned. “It’s luh-like a f-funhouse at a cuh-carnival or suh-something.” </p><p>They went up the staircase, holding onto each other like children. What had seemed to be no more than a dozen steps took several minutes to climb. The staircase wound around itself in a meandering spiral, their feet rising great clouds of dust from the bedraggled carpeting. Dust motes drifted around them, sparkling in the thin light from a filthy sunlight overhead. </p><p>“Does anyone hear that?” Mary’s voice rose shakily from behind Hal’s shoulder. Though they were the only ones in the house, she was whispering. </p><p>Hal did hear it, floating down from the floor above them: circus music, the faint tinkling sound of a calliope playing Camptown Races. For an insane second he thought he could actually smell it - frying dough and raspberry sno-cones, hot pretzels and buttered popcorn like they’d had at the fairs back in Texas before they’d moved. But the music was weak, and faint, dragging like a music box with a broken crank. It wavered and squealed in slow motion. The buttered popcorn smell disappeared, replaced by the nauseating scent of putrid rot. </p><p>“I hear it,” Hal answered, and the others murmured uneasy assent. Hiram was gasping for air behind him, his wheezing breaths audible below the music. <em> The dust, </em> Hal thought. It rose from the carpeting in pale clouds, bone-dry and ancient. <em> It’s like a tomb. A tomb or a crypt.  </em></p><p>They got to the landing and crowded in a huddle behind Fred. Hiram was holding the bottom of FP’s t-shirt, and Hal could feel Mary’s cold hand on his arm. </p><p>“Oh, shit,” FP whispered. </p><p>They were standing at the mouth of a narrow, carpeted hall. Sunlight glared on a windowpane at the far end, throwing odd shadows on the wallpaper border, which showed grotesque dead-eyed elves in pink pointed hats. The carpet was curling back from the baseboards, exposing the rotting wood beneath. It must have been a rose color once, but it was filthy and stained so that the pink showed through only in patches, the color of long-dried blood or naked flesh. The wallpaper hung down from the walls in garish peeling strips. At the far end of the hall, just before the window, was the thing FP had noticed: a single red balloon drifting about a foot from the floor. </p><p>The invisible calliope played on, the notes dragging like a funeral dirge. The balloon did not cast a shadow on the carpet. It bobbed up and down as though caught in an invisible breeze. Suddenly the hallway began to darken and change, the walls stretching endlessly up so that the doorframes were pulled thin and the faces of the elves on the wallpaper became grotesque and stretched, the black gaps of their eyes enormous and their mouths pulled down into bleeding screams. Mary screamed. </p><p>“STOP IT!” she begged, her hands pressed over her eyes, and then her ears. “MAKE IT STOP, MAKE IT STOP, PLEASE!” </p><p>The balloon exploded with a bang. “It’s not ruh-ruh-REAL!” Fred yelled. “It’s n-not ruh-REAL, MARY!” </p><p>“It is!” Mary screamed back. She had bent forward and had her fists curled over her ears the way she had that day in the garage. “God, I’m going crazy, this is crazy, this is CRAZY-” </p><p>Fred suddenly jumped and smashed his fist violently into the plaster ceiling. Or at least he smashed his fist into the place where there had once been a ceiling, and though it had since receded wildly above them, there was a THUD of bone striking an invisible plane. Then suddenly the hallway was just a hallway again, and the elves had shrunk back to their normal height, and Fred was simply standing in front of them holding his bleeding hand, from which white ceiling plaster was tumbling like falling snow. </p><p>“It’s just puh-pretend,” he stuttered. His knuckles were swollen and bruised. “Luh-like a f-f-f-funhouse.” </p><p>“It is to you,” Mary sobbed in response. The rest of them stood dumbly looking at her, unable to think of anything to say. “It is to you, but if I’d tried that nothing would have happened. Because you have your brother, Fred, you have Oscar but I don’t have anything-” </p><p>She began to weep the way FP had in the kitchen. Her panic was infectious. FP’s eyes had gone as round as moons, and he was breathing heavily as though hyperventilating. Hiram looked on the verge of passing out. Alice’s hand was shaking on the cup of the slingshot and Harry had his arms wrapped anxiously around himself, as though holding himself together. Hal felt sour nausea slowly creeping up his own throat. </p><p>“I don’t have anything!” Mary shouted. </p><p>“Yes you duh-duh-do!” Fred yelled back. His hand flew out, and for a bewildering moment Hal thought he was going to slap her. Then he saw Fred grab the bird-book out of Mary’s hip pocket. He stepped back, holding it up like a bible. </p><p>“Yes, y-you duh-duh-do y-you’ve guh-got y-your b-b-b-bi-bir-bir-” </p><p>He wet his lips desperately, his chin tilted up, the cords in his neck standing out like they were leaping from his skin, and Hal felt a surge of terror and pity and grief, strangely elated by the feeling. How had he doubted Fred? Fred would fix everything if he could just get the word out.<em> Say it, Fred, please say it -  </em></p><p>“You got your B-B-BI-BUH-BIRDS! Your BUH-BIRDS!” </p><p>He thrust the book into Mary’s arms. She took it, blinking bewilderedly at him with bright tears sparkling in her eyes. Then an unearthly calm seemed to settle over her features - she took two great gulps of air and put the bird book silently back in her pocket. Fred squeezed her shoulder, then turned to the others. </p><p>“Cuh-come on,” he said, and no one dared argue. “It’s j-just puh-puh-puh-pr-preten-” </p><p>“HELP ME!” </p><p>The child’s voice came from one of the doors at the very end of the hall. Fred jumped almost a foot, his face going white. There was a sliding, dragging sound, like a wet carcass being hauled through mud, and a head and shoulders suddenly appeared through one of the doorways. Whoever it was was dragging themselves along the carpeted floor by their forearms, struggling madly to escape. The face was smeared and blackened with dirt, the reaching arms soaked and filthy with what might have been blood. There was no way of determining gender or even age, but the name Betty Ripsom seemed to flash from mind to mind like a telepathic storm. </p><p>A hole in the face opened as the apparition croaked out a childish scream. </p><p>“HELP ME!” </p><p>Fred began to run towards it. FP followed him, spurred on by panic, with Harry close on their heels. </p><p>“FRED WAIT!” FP screamed. </p><p>“FUH-FUH-FOLLOW ME!” Fred yelled. He reached back and grabbed FP’s wrist, keeping them together. He was halfway to the doorway when the child suddenly screamed, and in a violent motion was dragged back into the room from which they’d escaped, leaving a gory streak of black filth on the pink carpet. </p><p>“BETTY!” Fred called. He burst into the room with FP behind him and the door swung shut after them with a violent slam, sealing them inside. Harry had to pull up short in the hallway to keep from smashing headlong into the wood, and still banged his elbow a good one on the doorjamb. Alice, Hiram, Mary, and Hal joined him a moment later, crowding in a panic around the sealed door that had split their party in two. </p><p>Harry rattled the doorknob. It was locked. He knocked on the wood with the flat of his hand, understanding as he did that it would not open for him. Fred called out to them through the wood, though his voice seemed to come from much further away than the few inches of door. </p><p>“Hiram! Alice!” Fred’s voice issued faintly. “Open the d-door!” </p><p>FP’s voice joined him, slightly stronger, the doorknob rattling in the frame. “This isn’t funny, assholes.” </p><p>“Is Betty alive?” Hiram asked. His voice was so small that it was barely audible over the music that echoed in the hall. </p><p>“I don’t know,” Fred said. He sounded even further away now, as though he were calling from a great distance. “Sh-She’s not here. There’s n-no one in here but us.” </p><hr/><p>Fred stopped short the second the door slammed, and FP collided hard with his back, gaping at the sight before him. They were in a large room at the end of the hall that might have once been a master bedroom. Three doors led off the opposite wall, which was blackened by great swaths of black mold. A stained mattress sat in one corner, accompanied by a rusty metal bar that might have been the remains of a bed frame. A black streak of blood and grime painted the hardwood floor beneath their feet. </p><p>The room was completely empty. </p><p><em> Tricked us, </em> FP thought helplessly. <em> We’re in a chuckalicious situation now, bud. Now we’re in here and they’re out there, and It won’t go out there, not while Alice has those slugs, and that means- well, that means I wasn’t wrong. Run with Fred and you get your chucks, all right. Enough for the rest of your life.  </em></p><p>Fred was calling to the others through the wood, and they could hear Harry knocking unhappily at the other side. FP rattled the doorknob fiercely, pulling hard in an effort to spring the door open. Instead, the doorknob snapped off abruptly in his hand. There was a tiny muffled thump beyond the crack at the bottom of the door, as though the other half had dropped softly to the hallway carpet. FP glanced worriedly down at the bone-white knob, the gold axis flashing dully in his palm through a thick layer of grime. </p><p>“Harry?” FP called, but the hallway beyond the door had gone oddly silent. He could no longer hear the voices of their friends or the echoing din of the carnival music. FP was bending down to press his eye to the hole from which the doorknob had broken when he heard Fred gasp. </p><p>He whirled around. When they had burst into the room on the heels of the mutilated child that had begged for their help, the three doors on the opposite wall had been white. Now spiky, blood-red handwriting exactly like the words they had seen on the Tracker Brothers building had blossomed outward from the surface of each door like blood welling from a cut. In an unnatural, backward-slanted hand, the three doors were now labelled: </p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>SCARY.</strong>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>VERY SCARY. </strong>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>NOT SCARY AT ALL. </strong>
</p><p> </p><p>They looked at each other, and then at the doors. FP supposed they could have been painted as a joke by some drifter or junkie, maybe even some other neighbourhood kids, someone like Marty Mantle with a really sick sense of humour - only they were beyond such rationalizing weren’t they? The porcelain doorknob was cool in his hand, warming slowly to the damp heat of his skin. He could hear his breath coming in thin, shallow gasps and wished briefly that he had Hiram’s inhaler. He wouldn’t have made fun of it now; right now its artificial battery-tasting mist would have been like a sweet drink of cold water. </p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>SCARY.</strong>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>VERY SCARY. </strong>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>NOT SCARY AT ALL. </strong>
</p><p> </p><p>Suddenly the mattress on the bed began to bulge in and out, a rhythmic, violent pulsing as though something human-sized within was attempting to break free. FP yelped and reached instinctively for Fred, hiding slightly behind his taller friend even as their hands slapped at one another’s arms in panic. Thick, ropey tendrils of black liquid began oozing out from below the mattress, running towards their feet in streams. They sizzled as they encroached on them, as though whatever it was was eating up the floor. The dead leaves scattered in the path of the black ooze curled and died as the roses had outside. </p><p>Fred threw out one hand to keep FP behind him. Their eyes locked, and through unspoken communication they both rushed to the door labelled NOT SCARY AT ALL, leaping over a clotted tendril of the black muck that was rushing towards them in a fast-moving ribbon. </p><p>Fred flung the door open. He kept his arm in front of FP as though to protect him, but the space beyond the doorway was empty and dark. It looked like a large walk-in closet, but there was a faint light at the far end, beyond where FP’s eyes could focus. He blinked rapidly, one hand fastened tight on Fred’s shoulder, trying to make out a window or a door. </p><p>Then Betty Ripsom’s corpse swung out of the dark, her legs severed and her innards dangling from the tattered remains of her waist. She was screaming. </p><hr/><p>“Find It,” was the last thing Alice heard Fred say from beyond the door. His voice was fainter still, as though he was moving away. She had to press her ear to the wood to hear him. “We’ll guh-get out. F-Find Ih-It and sh-shoot-” </p><p>Then a piercing scream split the air, forcing them all to clap their hands viciously over their ears. It was neither Fred nor FP’s voice - it was indeed nothing close to human. The scream rose in fervour and volume, increasing in pitch until it seemed to be the only living thing in Alice’s brain. The elongating hallway was nothing compared to this - Alice genuinely felt as though she would go insane from the sound of it. It was coming from a closed door across the hall, the sound of someone or something being tortured beyond understanding. </p><p>Mary had her eyes screwed shut, her knuckles white where her hands were gripping the sides of her head. Hiram had only one hand with which to cover his ears and was hyperventilating in great hacking gasps while Hal clutched his chest as though staving off a heart attack. Helpless to do anything else, Alice pivoted and pointed the Bullseye at the wooden door behind them, thinking frantically that if she could only shoot the source of the sound and silence it, the loss of one of their bullets would be worth it. </p><p>“Wait!” Harry said suddenly. Alice looked at him and saw that he had dropped his hands from around his ears, that impossibly, he was laughing. She thought briefly that perhaps he had already cracked, that the awful screaming had claimed its first victim. She pulled back the cup of the Bullseye further, and Harry stepped bravely in the path of fire. </p><p>“No, Stop! Oh wow, stop it.” He was still laughing, oddly handsome in the dingy, mouldering hall where the wallpaper hung like peeling skin. “It’s nothing. Look.” </p><p>He threw open the wooden door, revealing the source of the inhuman wailing - which turned out to be a small tin oil can through which a string had been pulled taut, with small holes punched in either side so the string could be knotted on the outside of the can. There was no breeze in this room, but some kind of draft was moving through the can all the same, producing the vibrating, insectile scream. </p><p>“It’s a mooseblower,” Harry explained, raising his voice to be heard over the noise. “My dad and I make them to scare off the birds that eat our crops. It’s just a tin can and some waxed string. That’s all.” </p><p>Harry walked over and kicked the can the way he’d kick a football. It flew into a corner of the room and crashed there indifferently, silencing the merciless wail. In its absence, the room seemed very still and very quiet. Light trickled in through the boarded window, dreamy and soft. </p><p>Maybe Alice had imagined it, but the room seemed almost to shift when he did this - seemed to shrink slightly, as though number 29 Neibolt Street had receded around them and become closer to being an abandoned house again, rather than whatever vessel it was for the thing that lived in the sewers. She blinked dumbly into the silent room and lowered the slingshot, holding it comfortably back at her side. </p><p>“It’s trying to scare us off,” said Harry. “Like farmers scare off crows.” </p><p>“It’s working,” said Hiram faintly. His voice pitched up into hysteria. “Jesus, I thought I was gonna puke. What do we do now?” </p><p>They looked at each other. None of them wanted to go on without Fred, but the path forward was undisputable. There were only three doors in the hallway: the mooseblower room, the room where Fred and FP had been shut off, and one more at the very end of the hall. It would be through there. Alice was certain of that. </p><p>“I’ve still got these, haven’t I?” Alice said, though her voice was stronger than she felt. She was trembling, but her strong hand still clutched the cup of the Bullseye with steady precision. “But stay close to me. No one gets left behind.” </p><p>Silently, they filed into a line behind her. Hal watched the thin yellow light cast golden streaks into her hair as she raised the Bullseye in her hand. </p><p><em> I love you, Alice, </em> he thought desperately. <em> I’ll protect you, I promise. I swear I’ll try.  </em></p><p>They began to walk towards the door at the end of the hall. </p><hr/><p>Fred slammed the door that said NOT SCARY AT ALL, and he and FP stood gasping in front of the wood, clutching each other’s hands. The sizzling black liquid moved steadily behind them towards their feet. FP chanced a glance back over his shoulder and almost passed out. </p><p>The clown was standing in front of the door that led to the hallway, its mouth stretched in a jagged smile that showed its spiky yellow teeth. The orange pom-poms on its mouldering costume seemed to glow in the dark, its pupils vertical cat-like slits. It was so huge that its head scraped the ceiling, powdery flakes of plaster settling in its orange hair. In one white-gloved hand, it held a bunch of colorful balloons. The other hand was bare, and its fingernails were thick and gnarled. Its huge, horrible eyes glowed like twin orange suns in the dingy light. </p><p>FP screamed long and loud. Fred spun around and shoved FP instinctively behind him, his arms pressing him tight to the wall. </p><p>“Time to float,” the clown boomed, in a voice that seemed to echo crazily in FP’s brain. The calliope music, previously missing, began to play in earnest. It laughed a giddy laugh, and FP shrank further behind Fred, gripping his waist with both hands. But Fred’s face had relaxed and gone curiously still, his arms dropping tentatively to his sides. </p><p>“Oscar?” Fred asked. It was the lack of fear in his voice that frightened FP most of all. It was soft and innocent, even hopeful. He took a step towards the monstrous clown, and FP pulled him back. The clown caught FP’s eye, and gave him a gaudy, exaggerated wink that made a cold sweat break out on his chest and arms. </p><p>“I know his secret,” the clown sang, advancing across the room towards them with its great domed head scraping the ceiling. The balloons wobbled against one another. “I know your dirty-” </p><p>“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” FP screamed, and flung the nearest thing to hand - the porcelain doorknob he was still holding - at the clown’s huge white skull. His aim went wide - there was a reason Fred was the pitcher - but it slammed into one of the balloons, which popped with a bang. Scraps of red rubber flew like shrapnel across the room. One of them landed on the clown’s ear, where it dangled like a severed flap of skin. </p><p>The clown’s face opened in response, actually unhinged and rolled upward like a garage door on a track. As it opened it revealed row after row of yellow, needle-sharp teeth, crowded together in rings like the gullet of a lamprey. It rushed at the pair of them, faster than fast, its face all teeth now, the pupils dilating madly in the orange pinpricks that were visible of its eyes. Its arms seemed to stretch impossibly long out ahead of it, the jagged red mouth extending into a hideous, tooth-filled pit. </p><p>FP screamed, and Fred seemed to wake from the trance he was in at last. He screamed too, and they sprinted frantically for the three doors behind them, FP in the lead this time. There was no time or need for discussion - they had read each other’s minds as easily as if their thoughts had been printed in the air. FP stuffed his fingers into the hole where a doorknob should have been on the door marked VERY SCARY, and for a horrible moment remembered Fred’s mangled fingers when they’d made contact with Oscar’s photo album, was certain that his own hand would be cut just as surgically when his fingers passed into the gap. But nothing happened. He flung open the door and was faced with the same dusty hallway they’d come through, the capering elves firmly in place on the decaying wallpaper and the floating red balloon conspicuously absent from the carpeted floor. It was dark but he could make out the rest of their group at the end of the hall, silhouetted by the globular light filtering in through the window. Behind them, he could see the sun shining like a great orange moon through the filthy glass. </p><p>“Thank fuck!” FP screamed, and grabbed Fred’s hand. His fingers digging deeply into the skin, he pulled Fred through the doorway and started to run, dragging Fred along behind him by their clasped hands. The others started running towards them too, and FP felt tears of frantic relief swim into his eyes as he sprinted madly through the dark towards his friends. </p><p>Then he collided abruptly with something cold and solid, knocking his head painfully into a hard, flat silver plane. He stepped back, Fred behind him, gasping in shock as he stared, horrified, at his own reflection. The thing he had been running towards was a mirror. The silhouettes he had thought were his friends had been their own reflection. </p><p>“NO!” FP screamed. He beat his hands against the surface of the mirror, refusing to believe he’d been tricked. <em> It’s not real, </em> he thought desperately, <em> it’s a trick, it’s not real </em>- but it seemed real enough, the hard reflective surface cold and unyielding below his hands. He squeezed his eyes shut so that the reflection of the hall behind him fell away - if he was to die here, pissing himself in the dark, at least he wouldn’t have to see it happen in the shadowy depths of the mirror before him. </p><p>He felt Fred’s hand disappear from his, and for a panicked moment thought he was going back for the clown alone. He was too afraid to turn and look behind him, too afraid to open his screwed-shut eyes, but he reached back in a panic and fisted the front of Fred’s shirt in his hand. Later FP would wonder if he had ever been so afraid before in his life. The darkness was pressing in on him, his heart galloping in his chest. It seemed to him that he had never understood fear until that moment, the way it surged dark and living in every part of his body, freezing his mind in an incoherent swell. </p><p>
  <em> Please, someone, please help us, please help us, I don’t like it here, I don’t want to die, please somebody, Fred, someone please please please let me get us out of this-  </em>
</p><p>He shoved the mirror with his free hand, and for an instant thought he felt a moment of give. It bowed inward as though he were pressing his hand into gelatin. Not really wanting to, but unable to go back, FP attempted to push his body forwards through the glass. The mirror closed around his shoulder and elbow like thick quicksand, swallowing his left arm entirely. His hand touched cool air on the other side. </p><p>“FRED!” he screamed, and then Fred was there against his back, pushing with him through the cool surface. Their bodies slid through the glass as though it had turned to mist. On the other side of the mirror, they stumbled blinking into another hall. </p><p>They were above the parlour - FP knew that because they were standing on the rim of an enormous hole in the floor, through which he could see the scum of bottles and curtains that they had passed on their way to the stairs. He could tell the ceiling of the parlour was not half as high as it had seemed when they were walking through that apparently never-ending room, but it was tall enough that he or Fred would have got a nasty surprise if they’d taken even one more step forward. The hole filled the width of the hallway, baseboard to baseboard. Jagged remains of the wooden flooring beneath the carpet stuck out into the gap like fractured bones. Fred was pressed close to him to keep from falling into the hole, his bony shoulder socked into FP’s right arm. </p><p>“We gotta jump, Freddie,” FP said, and his voice was so high and tight that it hardly seemed to belong to himself. He was shaking violently. Fred backed up and leaped immediately into thin air - he cleared the jagged edge of the hole easily, landing without so much as a waver on the other side of the gap, but there was a horrible moment where FP felt positive that the hole would suddenly grow to swallow him. </p><p>For a terrifying moment, FP’s legs wouldn’t move at all - then he launched himself over the precipice and felt the exhilarating absence of solid ground beneath his feet. Fred’s hand closed around his arm, pulling him to safety. He had also made it with room to spare, but they still overbalanced and fell to the ground together, landing in a tangle of limbs on the fraying carpet. </p><p>“A-Alright F-FP?” Fred stuttered, climbing to his knees. There was dirt and dust streaked on his face, and he was shaking too. FP, though he was quite possibly the furthest from alright he had ever been in his life, nodded his head. He opened his mouth to make a joke, or possibly to scream, but no voice would come out. He wheezed asthmatically for a second, and then simply took the hand Fred offered him and allowed himself to be pulled to his feet. He looked behind them in the direction they had come, but there was nothing there but the end of the hallway and the hole in the floor. </p><p>The two boys sprinted around the corner, following the curve of the elf wallpaper, and found themselves back on the landing. They ran headlong into the rest of the group, who had clustered into a single-file line behind Alice. Mary, who was at the end, whirled around and screamed. </p><p>“How’d you get behind us!” </p><p>“It doesn’t make sense,” said Hiram, who was shaking. He had grabbed onto Hal with his one good arm. “The way it’s laid out, the hallways, it’s not <em> right. </em> This house isn’t <em> right. </em>” </p><p>“We saw it,” FP gasped, foregoing small talk. “We saw it-” </p><p>“Where is it?” </p><p>“There,” Fred answered. </p><p>There was one last door standing shut at the end of the hall. No one questioned Fred’s confidence. He swallowed hard and looked around at the others. </p><p>“Everyone together?” </p><p>They moved in a pack towards the last door in the hall. Alice was holding the slingshot by the Y now, the elastic drawn back and ready to shoot. Harry understood as he watched Fred turn the knob that there would not be a trick behind this door, no mooseblower or whatever bit of funhouse sleight-of-hand had led Fred and FP in a circuitous route behind them at the top of the stairs. This would be a confrontation. For a moment a prayer he had learned at the Church School crept into his mind, and he wondered blasphemously if it would be any help at all. </p><p><em> You never told me, Dad, </em>he thought.<em> What it was like in that fire. You said you’d tell me when I’m older, but i think I’d understand it now. Trapped in there with all those burning bodies. Did it feel like this?  </em></p><p>There was no shortage of belief tying him to this hallway where they crept towards the door that held It in a trembling pack - Harry believed in that moment in God and Heaven and Hell, that Fred would lead them on well and protect them, he believed in his own eleven-year-old’s invulnerability and the unspoken power of their silver slugs - </p><p>But oh God, would it be enough?  Would anything? </p><p>Fred opened the door, and Alice lifted the slingshot to shoulder-height. They were looking into a bathroom, which was as blighted and disfigured as the rest of the house. An ornate, claw-footed bathtub sat in a black puddle of scum and mold against one wall. A medicine cabinet with a busted door sat above a rusted sink, the empty shelves within stained with yellow rings where there may once have been bottles. As in the hall, a carpet of dead leaves was strewn across the floor, but interspersed here and there were pools of fetid water and small jagged chunks of porcelain. At first Harry had no idea what they were - then he noticed the one thing the room was missing. His eye landed on the remains of a shattered toilet-tank, and he realized the bowl of the toilet had to have exploded entirely outwards. Shards of the porcelain were stuck haphazardly in the walls. </p><p>“Hiram’s mom must have laid a killer fart,” said FP somberly, though his teeth were chattering with fear. Hiram whacked him hard with his good hand. </p><p>“Shut up!” His voice was trembling too. “I hate you, I swear to God!” </p><p>They all approached the place where the toilet had once been, and froze when they saw what was set into the floor. It was a hole, perfectly round, perhaps thirty inches across. Beyond the lip of the hole it descended into total darkness, a darkness so complete that it made shadows float eerily in Hal’s vision when he tried to squint into its depths. From the darkness of the hole, a steady humming sound was audible, rising up from far below the ground. </p><p>“Listen,” Hal said. “That’s what the pumps sound like in the Barrens.” </p><p>They all froze and listened to the steady underground thrum. It was the same all right - only echoing up from that underground depth the sound attained an oddly human element, as though they were listening to breath passing through an enormous pair of lungs. </p><p>Fred’s cheeks were flushed, his eyes alight with discovery. “This is w-w-wuh-where it c-comes from,” he said excitedly. “This is wh-where it gets out of the suh-sewers.” </p><p>FP nodded, his face bloodless. “That day in the cellar it came down the stairs. From here, I guess.” </p><p>“Yeah, just one question,” Hiram piped up. “Where the hell is it now?” </p><p>Just then, Hal saw something flicker in the depths of the pipe. He leaned further over the expanse of darkness, and then reeled back suddenly in fear. He was not altogether sure of what he had seen. It had been - the only word that flashed into his mind to describe it was<em> orange. </em>He had seen what he thought were eyes - pinpricks of light glowing maliciously in the dark. And it had been moving, moving quite fast, up the gullet of the hole towards the surface. </p><p>“It’s coming!” he screamed. “I saw It, It’s coming!” </p><p>“Good,” said Alice cooly. She lifted the slingshot in a decisive gesture that made every heart in the room warm towards her. </p><p>It exploded out of the darkness of the pipe. Hal saw something orange-silvery and shifting, something his eyes could not quite make sense of. Then FP screamed, and its shape coalesced into the clown, which landed on the dirty bathroom floor with a thump that rattled the door of the medicine cabinet. </p><p>Its eyes were brilliant orange and evil. Orange tufts of hair stood out from its ears, and red lines slashed through the white greasepaint of its face, ending in sharp points above each eye. It was standing with its enormous feet planted on each side of the wide hole, wearing a shambling old-timey costume, complete with neck ruffle and frilled sleeves and a line of bright orange pom-poms down the front. The rest was the washed-out color of ancient dirt - not quite gray but the suggestion of gray, appearing almost like the memory of a color. It uttered a giddy laugh and lunged for Alice, who reeled back, loosening her grip on the Bullseye. The silver ball dropped onto the floor. Harry, quick as a flash, scooped it up and gave it to her. </p><p>“Shoot it,” he said. “Shoot it, Alice.” </p><p>The clown grinned madly. “Tasty,” it cheered in a high, inhuman voice, licking its grease-painted lips. “Tasty fear. Beautiful fear.” It feigned a lunge towards Hiram, who screamed in horror and then let out a pained moan, slumping back into the wall. His face had lost so much color that the cluster of veins at his temple stood out blue. The clown’s body elongated further towards the ceiling, enjoying this reaction so much that it seemed to grow in the face of it, its face stretching horribly as the wallpaper elves had stretched in the hallway. </p><p>Its orange eyes snapped immediately to Fred, its head twisting abnormally on its neck, which did not move. FP realized with a sickening lurch that it knew beyond a shadow of a doubt who of their party was in charge. It was Fred it wanted. He suddenly realized that they had moved to opposite walls when they had entered, that he was now trapped across the room from Fred, too far and too slow to change the inevitable course of events. The clown sprang towards Fred, moving faster than anything FP had ever seen, and in the face of this gibbering insanity Fred only stood and let it come, only stretched his arms out towards the clown as it rushed towards him as though to embrace it. </p><p><em> “NO, FRED!” </em> FP screamed madly. His voice wrenched itself out of his windpipe as no scream had ever done before; something tore painfully at the back of his throat, and he tasted copper. For an instant he <em> saw </em> Fred die - saw the clown’s unhinged mouth open wide enough to swallow him, the lower ring of teeth cutting saw-like through his grasping arms and his jugular vein to snap his neck. Then reality caught up to this nightmarish vision, and he watched with helpless, heart-wrenching gratitude as Hal leaped and shoved Fred aside just in time. The blur of the clown’s shoulder collided with Fred’s body, knocking him hard into the wall. Blood sprayed from Fred’s nose like a jet before he went down into a scatter of desecrated porcelain. He landed on the floor like a ragdoll flung by a careless child, the broken pieces of toilet carving dozens of tiny cuts in his arms and chin. A great wave of dizziness rushed over FP, and he saw stars flashing in front of his eyes. </p><p>Alice suddenly fired the shot. It went wide, punching a gaping hole in the wallpaper just above Fred’s head. The clown’s head turned towards her, its orange eyes alight with focus. Its mouth peeled open, exposing sharp yellow teeth, and it let out an aggressive animal growl. Unthinkingly, Hal stepped bravely in between her and the monster. The clown lunged at him and swiped at his belly with the gloveless hand, which morphed before FP’s eyes into a werewolf’s jagged paw. </p><p>Hal was knocked off his feet. He fell backwards into the bathtub, blood pumping heavily from his torn stomach, creating cherry-red splotches on the white porcelain. His head struck the rusty faucet with an echoing thud, and he grasped madly at the side of the bath to pull himself back up, his own blood slick under his fingers. He fell back into the bath. </p><p>“SHOOT IT, SHOOT IT, SHOOT IT!” Hiram was screaming. The clown laughed in joyful triumph. Alice’s fingers closed over the second silver ball in her pocket. She drew it out and placed it in the cup of the Bullseye, moving like a girl in a dream. Her world slowed to a crawl. She stared at the clown and saw every detail in bright, glaring relief - the red paint, the orange hair, the shattered toilet bowl on the floor and the way the sunlight filtered in through the window and lay cat-like on the filthy carpet of leaves. Her frantically jittering hand calmed. She drew the elastic back steady and straight, her eyes fixed on the clown’s orange eye. </p><p>“SHOOT IT, ALICE!” FP screamed. </p><p>“Beep Beep, FP,” she replied. Her voice did not seem to be her own - it came from some deep hidden place inside her, some unknown reservoir of cool confidence. She fired as smoothly and naturally as she had done on the day they pegged the cans in the dump. A small black hole punched into the clown’s white face, less than a quarter-inch from its eye. Blood - bright red and viscous - gushed wildly from the wound. </p><p>Shock rippled through the group, brief and flaring. The clown stumbled slightly, skidding in the porcelain and blood on the floor (<em> the old banana peel gag, FP would remember thinking, Jesus Christ- </em>) and almost seemed to shrink in size as it righted itself. Its head moved mechanically from side to side. Its face was made more grotesque for this injury, its orange eyes filled with fresh blood and the skull misshapen as though it had twisted to accommodate the hole. For the first time, Alice realized they had it surrounded, the seven of them on the outskirts of the room circling the drainhole in the floor. </p><p>Hiram and Harry advanced towards it from opposite directions, neither seemingly aware that they were doing so. “Kill it, Alice!” FP cried. “Shoot it again, kill it!” </p><p>“Kill it!” Hiram screamed madly. </p><p>Mary joined in quickly. “That’s right kill it! Kill it, don’t let it get away!” </p><p>Hal pulled himself up in the bathtub. “Kill it, Alice, kill it!” </p><p>Alice had pulled the sling back again. Her fingers were closed over the cup, hiding its emptiness. Harry’s eyes met FP’s, and he knew they were both thinking the same thing. There were no other bullets, there was nothing but hope and imagination in that gesture. The clown’s head snapped around, looking at all of them, weighing its chances. Fred, crumpled on the floor, blood running into his teeth, smiled.</p><p>“You shouldn’t have started with my brother,” he said. There was no trace of a stutter. “Send the fucker to hell, Alice.” </p><p>It believed. </p><p>The clown dove headfirst into the gullet of the pipe, seemingly turning to vapor as it sank - or something very close to vapor, a vast shimmer that was not quite definable to the human eye. Then the darkness swallowed it. The pumping sound got briefly louder and then returned to a steady thrum. </p><p>Mary ran to Hal, who was holding both hands against his bleeding stomach. Harry followed her and lifted Hal’s arm over his broad shoulders, helping him step out of the claw-footed tub. </p><p>“Don’t let it get away,” called Fred. He had got up, his nose still bleeding, and was walking towards the drainhole in the floor.. They all screamed at once. </p><p>“NO! FRED!"</p><p>“FRED ARE YOU CRAZY?” </p><p>“FRED, STOP IT!” </p><p>“FRED ARE YOU INSANE?!” </p><p>He ignored their voices, and Alice thought he was close to dropping down the pipe himself. Very close. It was Mary who lunged and dragged him back by his wrist, her hand fastened so tightly around his arm that it would leave faint finger-shaped marks. They stood looking at each other, and suddenly Alice noticed something else - the house had shrunk again, receded the way the bedroom had when Harry had kicked the mooseblower. The unidentifiable expansion that had been the product of Its evil was gone. It was only an abandoned house again - lonely and neglected in a small jungle of weeds, a falling-down, urine-smelling place where transients and winos came to drink and sleep below the porch. There were no trick halls or slamming doors. The sunlight had lost its orange cast and shone weak and white around the filth built up in the windowframes. </p><p>It was gone. </p><hr/><p>The sun was still shining brightly when they burst out of the front doors, Harry with Hal’s arm slung over his shoulders. Harry looked up at the sky to chart its position and was shocked to see they had been in the house for no more than an hour. </p><p>Now that they were outside he expected the bright glare of sunlight and fresh air to give the events the surreal quality of a nightmare, the way the terror of the bird’s attack had dissipated for him once he had reached the farm. Instead, he found he could recall them with surreal precision - every moment in that awful house imprinted in bright living color in his memory. He shivered despite the warmth. </p><p>“Nice shot, Alice,” said Hiram shakily when they reached the street. He raised his inhaler to his mouth and blasted heavily on it, finally crouching down and putting his head between his knees. </p><p>“You did great,” said Hal warmly. He did not blush, but perhaps only because of the blood he was losing from his stomach. The bleeding had slowed, but it was now leaking in sluggish, ominous trickles down his thigh. Alice gave him a trembling smile and smoothed down the front of her tattered blouse with her sweaty hands. </p><p>“It’s not over, is it?” she said sadly. She looked at Fred when she asked. </p><p>“No,” said Fred quietly. He had wiped some of the blood from his nose and chin, but it still dried on the front of his neck in a red slash. A cut from the porcelain of the toilet bowl decorated his left eyebrow. “N-Not yet.” </p><p>“Fuck that.” </p><p>They all looked around strangely, as if to see who had spoken. It was FP’s voice, but there was not even a trace of a joke in it. He walked close to Fred, very close, so close that there was only a shimmering half-foot of gap between their two faces. He was breathing heavily, his breath passing in harsh heaving wheezes. </p><p>“If no one’s going to say it, then I will!” FP shouted. They all stared dumbly at him, caught off guard. “You’re insane, Fred. Just because you want to die, doesn’t mean we all do!” </p><p>“W-We only hu-hurt it,” Fred replied stubbornly. “It wuh-will c-come b-back, and t-then-” </p><p>“No, shut up about the fucking clown! Why don’t you just admit it? Oscar’s dead, so you want to die too, and you don’t care if you take us all down in the process.” </p><p>“FP, stop,” said Mary pleadingly. </p><p>“Am I fucking wrong?” He looked around at all of them, eyes flashing with some flat, unstated emotion behind his glasses. “We all saw him in there.” He gave Fred’s shoulder a shove, his voice cracking. “It’s all pretend, you said! And then you fall for the first fucking trick it throws at you! Betty Fucking Ripsom, Jesus Christ, Fred they found her body all ripped up after Christmas! She’s not in the fucking Neibolt Street crackhouse!” </p><p>“It tuh-tuh-tricked us-” </p><p>“This isn’t about It! Stop lying! You’re trying to kill yourself because of Oscar, and you dragged us all into it! </p><p>Fred’s eyes were hard with emotion, his face contorted from the effort of stuttering. “Wuh-We all a-agreed-” </p><p>“Yeah, you had us going saying our faggy <em> I love you</em>s on the porch, didn’t you?” FP suddenly lashed out and shoved Fred with both hands, hard enough that he stumbled slightly backwards despite their difference in size. “Oscar is dead, Fred! He’s dead! But we don’t have to die too!” </p><p>“T-Take it b-back,” Fred stuttered, shoving a hand into FP’s chest. </p><p>“He’s dead!” FP screamed. “You can’t save him but you can still save yoursel-” </p><p>Fred suddenly swung out his arm. His fist connected with the bridge of FP’s nose in a single, hard punch that sent him sprawling to the asphalt, his glasses knocked askew. There were shouts from the other five kids. Hal’s face went white, and he quickly grabbed Fred’s arms and held them tightly to keep him from swinging again. </p><p>“You’re crazy!” FP screamed, scrambling to his feet. He rushed for Fred, who lunged at him at the same time. Alice had to grab one of Fred’s wrists to keep him from breaking out of Hal’s hold, while Harry wrapped both arms around FP’s waist and held him tightly. FP started kicking wildly as though trying to reach Fred with his feet, and Harry had to lift him almost off the ground before he’d stop. “Fuck off! I’m so fucking sick of you and this fucking shit-!” </p><p>“Fred!” Mary shouted when the arm Alice was holding snapped back as though to land another punch. She was standing next to FP, and she grabbed his other arm, struggling with Harry to pull him away. Fred’s face had gone brilliant red with anger, but Hal managed to keep them apart, shoving himself in the middle of the confrontation. Alice was screaming at them all to stop fighting. </p><p>FP slapped Harry’s arm off and adjusted his glasses. He stormed over to their abandoned heap of bikes, realized he’d come there on Fred’s, and immediately turned and flipped him the finger. </p><p>They watched him stalk off down Neibolt Street on foot, his retreating back getting smaller and smaller. No one dared speak. Fred stared stormily after him, and then all the fight went out of him. His shoulders slumped, and he looked at his bruised hand. He did not cry, but a sudden helplessness radiated from him that was somehow more frightening. It was as though the same thing that had happened to the house had happened to him - he had become smaller, less real. </p><p>“We’re still here, Fred,” Hal said quietly. He was now bleeding so badly that the left leg of his jeans was drenched. He looked so worriedly around at the others that they all nodded, though Mary did so more than a little reluctantly. Harry swallowed and put his hands in his jean pockets. </p><p>“He’ll come back,” he said softly. “He has to.” </p><p>“Then what do we do?” Alice asked. “More silver slugs?” </p><p>“No,”  said Fred softly. His throat ached, and it was difficult to speak. He gestured weakly to Hal instead, who nodded in understanding. The silver balls had worked this time because the seven of them had been united in the belief that they would. But next time It would come to them in a form over which the silver had no power. </p><p>He swallowed hard and looked at the heap of bikes, the sun beating down on his freckled, sunburned neck, and then at all their faces - solemn, glowing, possessed by some inner light - and yet young, so young, at the same time. Hiram was breathing unsteadily. Mary was very pale. </p><p>“Come on,” he said, turning towards the bikes, and they followed him. </p><p>July was nearing its end. There were times in the following weeks of quiet when Fred returned to FP’s accusations, propelled into periods of reflection while mowing the lawn for his father or completing some other mindless chore that freed his subconscious to fixate on those words. On those occasions he felt the same defensiveness that Alice must have felt when they had all turned on her with the identical dogwood branches in their hands, the same phrase springing to his mind, losing assurance the more he repeated it: <em> I didn’t. I didn’t.  </em></p><p>He thought about these things, but not all the time. Nor did the other six children fixate on the knowledge of what was to be done, though Hal returned doggedly to the library to take out new books and Hiram continued to antagonize his mother, refusing her frequent orders that he keep away from his friends. Life went on at eleven, and it was still summer: a summer that brought hot, bright days and lovely nights as well as the cloying, heady terror that continued to plague the town. </p><p>There would be time enough in the coming weeks for Harry to help his father and mother with the picking of their crops of corn and beans, time while Hiram’s broken arm mended and the gash across Hal’s belly healed to a scab, time in which Mary would note a red-headed woodpecker in Bassey Park and FP would beat his Street Fighter score in the arcade. Fred would ride Harry double on Silver’s back, and he and FP would make up from their fight - the whole group would spend days on end in their clubhouse, and would one Saturday go on a spectacular Monopoly binge that lasted three days and only ended when they left the board out on Hal’s porch one night to be rained on. On one particular afternoon, buoyed up by a particularly successful game of Street Fighter, FP would, while passing the Kissing Bridge, stoop and carve two sets of initials into the soft wood with a pocket knife, a ritual usually undertaken by older high school kids and their lovers. </p><p>July led into August. Nothing much happened for the next two weeks. </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. the gift in the mailbox</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <em> “I love you Beverly, just let me have that. You can have Bill, or the world, or whatever you need. Just let me have that, let me go on loving you, and I guess it’ll be enough.” - Stephen King, It. </em>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>
  <strong> <span class="u">AUGUST, 1989.</span> </strong>
</p><p>It would come as no surprise to anyone who had run afoul of Marty Mantle in that summer of 1989 that his sanity, which had already been crumbling on the day he had carved his first initial into Hal Cooper’s belly, was hanging by the beginning of August by a very precarious thread. Of his friends, only Marcus Mason - whose precarious grasp of reason made Marty’s extreme and aggressive stupidity appear like godlike intellect in comparison - was still in the dark about this development. Mike Minetta had already disappeared from Marty’s entourage, and could be heard denouncing Marty and his father to his new friends as <em> a real fucked up piece of work. </em> Darryl Doiley stuck around for the time being, but he continued to grow increasingly concerned with Marty’s obsession with the group of preteens known as the Losers Club and his general proclivity towards violence. In the fall, Darryl told himself often, he would have to find some better friends, friends you could chum around with without worrying about one of them pulling a knife on you. Still, Darryl felt quite certain that the line that Marty would cross that would denote having gone <em> too far </em> had not appeared. </p><p>At least until he first heard the voice out of the sewers. </p><p>In the meagre reporting that would follow the Riverdale murders of 1989, no definite reason would ever be identified for the day Marty Mantle’s sanity had snapped entirely - but there was indeed one very specific catalyst. Marty simply woke up one morning a little while after he’d broken that twerp Hiram Lodge’s arm, began to walk towards town, and noticed a bunch of red balloons tied to the flag of the Mantles’ battered roadside mailbox. </p><p>The farm sat far enough back from the main road that checking the mail required a five-to-ten minute jaunt down the unpaved road that led into Riverdale. Marty had seen the balloons from the time he had turned out of his driveway and past a thick grove of trees, but until he was close enough to touch them, he was not quite sure of what he was seeing. Though the mail truck didn’t get this far out until the middle of the afternoon, the red flag on the side of the rusted box was raised. Each red rubber balloon was decorated with a smiling face, and they stood up straight against the backdrop of the blue sky. </p><p>Marty stared at the balloons until the one nearest him popped with a bang. That felt good - like he had killed it with his mind. The sound reminded him something of those M-80s he’d wasted in the gravel pit, and his thoughts turned darkly to the voice he had heard last night, the voice that had come from the moon. He had a bruise on his cheek from where the old man had walloped him a good one just before it had happened, and it hurt when he pulled the skin of his face into a smile. </p><p>Marty opened the small door and peered into the depths of the mailbox, his eyes dark and focused. Inside was a flat, rectangular box which he drew out purposefully, tearing open the brown wrapping before even checking the name or return address. It was, of course, addressed to him. The return label said very simply: </p><p>
  <strong>Mr. Robert Gray</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>Riverdale, Maine</strong>
</p><p> </p><p>Marty opened the red box within the wrappings, dropping the paper thoughtlessly to the dirt road. Laying on a bed of cotton inside the box was the knife he had lost down in the Barrens on the last day of school. He lifted it in his hand and pressed the small chromium button on the side of the leather handle, enjoying the way the heavy five-inch blade slid out with a resounding click. </p><p>Rather than continue towards town, where he had intended to meet Darryl and Marcus at the Costello Avenue Market, Marty turned around and headed back the way he had come. He folded the knife and slipped it back into his pocket, and it lay heavy and cool against his thigh as he walked, jingling merrily alongside a handful of pocket change and his battered old lighter. Marty walked into his family farmhouse, crossed the room to where his father lay sleeping in front of the television, and held the handle of his new gift to the pulse point on Richard Mantle’s neck. </p><p>He stood there for a moment, his thumb tracing the silver button, listening to the shallow rasp of his father’s breathing. His gaze drifted to the television screen, where an inane breakfast-hour children’s show provided steady background noise to his father’s beery sleep. In it, a group of schoolchildren sat before a pastel-painted backdrop of a town square. A woman in a navy dress held a red balloon before the group. </p><p>“I just love when things float,” she said. Her gaze moved to Marty, her eyes bright and lifeless beyond the staticy rasp of the television screen. Her voice was exactly the same as the voice he had heard last night out of the moon. “You will too, Marty.” Her smile became broad and radiant. “Kill him, Marty. Kill them all.” </p><p>“Kill them all!” cheered the assembled schoolchildren. A white-faced clown with red hair rose slowly up from the front of the screen and stood before the group, raising one white-gloved hand in a gesture of familiarity. “Kill them all! Kill them all!” </p><p>Marty pressed down on the button of the knife. The blade sprang out and embedded itself deeply into the flesh of Richard Mantle’s neck. Blood, dark and viscous, bubbled out around the handle and began to flood down his chest in sheets. His father’s eyes bulged. For a moment one of the callused hands that had dealt so much punishment upon his son lept towards his throat and clutched almost gently at Marty’s wrist. </p><p>Marty watched this with fascination and a secret enjoyment. His palm filled up with hot blood around the handle of the knife, running fast and thick as it filled his father’s lap and dribbled onto the floor below the recliner. It took only a few moments for the sound of his choking to cease. Richard twitched, a sticky rim of blood filling the crack between his lips, and then died. Altogether it was shorter than Marty would have liked. But there was something admittedly pleasant about the swiftness with which the blade had dealt out death. Yes, there was something pleasant about that too. </p><p>He pulled the knife back out, and was surprised when it came easily, like it was sliding through butter. Marty wiped the blade on the hem of his shirt, exposing the shining metal beneath the thick glaze of blood. The voices of the schoolchildren onscreen rose in pitch and fervour, chanting with frantic pace, but it was all old news to Marty Mantle, who had heard all this before. He had heard it from the moon above his bedroom window last night, and he had noticed when he had stepped out to get the mail that the same pale crescent still hung in the blue sky above the fields. </p><p><em> Kill them all, </em>the voice from the moon had said, and that suited Richard Mantle’s son Marty just fine. He thought it was well past time those little brats got what was coming to them, the stuttering freak and the fat boy and the bitch with the slingshot, and he thought it was only natural that he was the one to do the dealing. Yeah, he’d kill them, alright, no problems there. And he’d like it too. </p><p>Marty walked out of the farmhouse and down towards the road, his thumb circling the silver button of the bloody hunting knife in his pocket. He thought Darryl and Marcus would wait for him. The voice from the moon had reassured him on that point. Yes, they’d be there waiting on the corner of Costello and Kansas Street when he got there around noon. </p><p>And then there was work to be done. </p><hr/><p>“Where are you sneaking off to, Ally?” </p><p>Alice stopped with her hand on the doorknob of the front door of the apartment. Beyond the blinds that shaded the door’s square window, she could see the bright August sunlight warming the crumbling pavement and the patchy green grass of the lawn. Behind her, invisible in the apartment’s dim light, her father was sitting not in his usual recliner but in a green chair by the kitchen doorway that they didn’t use very often. The blinds had been pulled over the windows and he had been sitting in an umbra of gloom, his face hidden in the darkness. </p><p>“Nowhere, Daddy,” Alice replied instinctively. She crumpled her hands in the skirt of her faded sundress, which she wore over spandex leggings and which she had already outgrown at the beginning of the school year. Most of Alice’s clothes were too small for her, owing to the fact that they had no money to replace them. Her father’s hand twitched on the arm of the chair, his fingers constricting convulsively inward like the jaws of a trap. He spoke in a matter-of-fact tone that made gooseflesh break out coldly along her spine and shoulders. </p><p>“If you lie to me, I’ll beat you within an inch of your life, Ally.” </p><p>Alice’s heart began to quicken. She moved her hand down from the warm scuffed metal of the doorknob, regretting the gesture even as she did so, flooded with the premonition that she had held this doorknob with safety and security on the other side for the last time in her life. </p><p>“I...I won’t lie, Daddy. What’s wrong?” </p><p>She walked towards him even in light of his threat, her lip quivering as she took small steps towards his chair. Roger’s bloodshot eyes met hers, and her mind slipped crazily into some other place: some old, long-ago memory of a time when she was young and convinced of her father’s love, the two of them visiting the train museum that she had so loved, her hand holding his and her small face turned affectionately up towards him, her father beaming down at her as she marvelled at his age and permanence and security. </p><p>He turned his hand palm-up, and she moved to place her small hand within it, wishing badly to hold onto that memory even as it fell away and she was left with him - this new, hard, horrible view of him - this thing that he had become. When his reddened eyes fixed on her face they could have been the eyes of a stranger. </p><p>“You know I worry about you, Ally.” </p><p>“I know.” God help her, she did. Her heart was pounding hard against the front of her sweatshirt. He looked at her chest as though he could hear it, an unnatural malice briefly taking over his composed expression. </p><p>“I seen you getting big on top,” he said. She waited for him to say something else, but he only looked at her after this proclamation in anger and concern. His hand tightened around hers. </p><p>“Daddy…?” Alice asked. She tried to pull her wrist lightly back from his hand and found there was not even an inch of give in his grasp. </p><p>“People in town have been saying some things to me about you. Sneaking around all summer long with a bunch of boys.” </p><p>“They’re just friends, Daddy, I swear-” </p><p>His palm flashed out too quickly for her to follow and struck her hard on her cheek. Alice’s hand flew to cradle the stinging welt and she took a great step back, halting when her father reached out and seized her tightly by the other wrist. She could feel the warmth of his palm where he had struck her pressed against her flying pulse. </p><p>“I know what’s in boys’ minds when they look at you, Ally.” His voice was still deadly calm, that pleasantly rational tone that was somehow worse than being screamed at. “Now, I’m going to ask you one more time. Have you been doing things down in the woods with those boys?” </p><p>“No- No, you don’t have to worry, I promise-” She tugged weakly away from his grip, but he held her wrist so tightly that she couldn’t move. He pulled her in quickly by the wrist so that her knees smashed painfully into the side of his chair. </p><p>“What have you let them do to you?” His breath was hot on her face. He suddenly released one of her wrists, and the skin exposed to the air was cold and clammy when his warm hand moved away. An odd light came into her father’s eyes, and he moved one hand up to cradle her cheek, the fingers sliding against her skin. “Are you still my girl, Ally?” </p><p>The look on his face scared her - it scared her beyond anything she had felt before. She saw something flicker in the dark of his eyes, deep down, the way she had seen It flickering in the depths of the hole that descended from the Neibolt Street bathroom. Panic closed Alice’s throat. </p><p>“NO!” she screamed. She yanked her wrist hard away from his grip, losing her balance and staggering back into the coffee table. The lip of the table connected hard with the back of her exposed legs, and she fell onto her hands and knees, hitting the carpet hard. </p><p>Her father stood up. There was something badly wrong with him, and she saw it perfectly now - his face was empty. His eyes were cold and dark like the eyes of a mask, his jaw slack and the skin hanging oddly off his face as though it had been stretched and reapplied. There was not the raw malice she had felt from the orange-eyed clown, it was lesser than that, but Its presence was unmistakable. It was within her father somehow, working through him. </p><p>She scrambled backwards away from him as he walked briskly towards her, his work boots sinking into the faded living room carpet. Her hair was in her eyes, obscuring her vision in gold streaks. </p><p>“No!” she screamed. “GET AWAY FROM ME- NO!” </p><p>“I know you've been down there,” he was saying, his face blank and horrible. “I didn’t believe it at first. My Ally hanging around with a bunch of boys. But then I seen you. I seen you, Ally. Twelve years old, and hanging around with a bunch of boys. Twelve years old, ALLY!” </p><p>This thought caused him to snap a harsh kick into her lower leg that made her cry out in pain. She scrambled away from him again, the worn carpet of the living room giving way under her hands to slick linoleum tile as she shot into the kitchen. She pushed the heels of her sneakers into the ground, sliding her rear end along the floor, her eyes fixed on the familiar worn leather of her father’s work boots. </p><p>“Don’t you run away from me. You run away and you’ll make things worse for yourself.” Alice’s head smashed into the edge of one of the kitchen chairs, and she bit down painfully on her tongue. She cowered half under the kitchen table, watching her father approach. “This is serious, Ally. You listen to your dad. Hanging around with those boys, letting them do things to you - this is serious, you believe me.” </p><p>“We don’t do anything, daddy,” she wailed, scrambling backwards again, under the shadow of the table now and towards the opposite doorway. “We just play-” </p><p>“Play what, Alice?” </p><p>Her back smashed into the stove and she winced. “Nothing!” </p><p>But now she felt guilt mix with her fear. Because hadn’t she ridden on Fred’s bike? Yes, she had. Hadn’t she thought about kissing him? Hadn’t she kept the poem? </p><p>Her father suddenly crossed the room in two quick strides, throwing aside a kitchen chair so that it clattered violently against the linoleum floor. </p><p>“I’VE SEEN YOU SMOKING!” he bellowed, and struck her across the face. Her eye watered from the pressure of his hand, reducing his pale face and blonde stubble to a frightening swirl above her head. He began to chant in a high, hysterical voice. “A GIRL WHO SMOKES WILL DRINK! AND A GIRL WHO WILL DRINK - EVERYONE KNOWS WHAT A GIRL LIKE THAT WILL DO!” </p><p>There was blood running down from Alice’s nose into her mouth, thick and salty where it clung to her lips. She blinked furiously against the tears as she tried to defend herself, appealing with increasing desperation to what she foolishly still believed to be her father’s sense of reason. </p><p>“I didn’t do anything bad, Daddy. I didn’t do anything like -like that. I didn’t do anything <em> bad. </em> I promise.” </p><p>“Ally,” he said calmly. “I seen you with boys. Now you want to tell me what a girl does down there in the woods with boys if it ain’t what a girl does on her back?” </p><p>“SHUT UP!” Alice suddenly screamed, and kicked her sneakered foot up furiously hard into his shin. “I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING!” </p><p>Her father grimaced when she kicked him, but his progress didn’t slow. He moved forward and stood over her, his feet planted on either side of her legs and his head seeming to stretch up forever to the water-stained apartment ceiling. He crouched down and placed his hands on either side of her thighs, and they were gentle - that was the worst part, that the hands that had doled out such violence were still capable of warmth. His voice was maddeningly docile and matter-of-fact when he spoke, almost kind. </p><p>“Take off your dress, Ally.” </p><p>“What?” </p><p>“I’m going to check. I’m going to check and see if you are telling the truth. I know how.” </p><p>She shook her head furiously. “No.” </p><p>She saw the surprise flare in his eyes, infusing their malignance with such an oddly human response that she wondered briefly if she had misjudged the extent to which It had control of him. He seemed almost pitifully amazed by her resistance. </p><p>“What did you say to me, Ally?” </p><p>“I SAID NO!” she screamed, and he actually reeled back from her, as though from the warmth that flooded into her face, making her nerves feel as though they were on fire. She hardly recognized the anger that swelled in her, bright and alive, leaping like tongues of flame from the pit of her stomach to her dry throat. She scrambled to her feet, feeling her way along the kitchen counter towards the door that led out into the backyard and towards the rusty incinerator. “Who told you that we play down there? Who was it?” </p><p>“You get back here, Ally.” </p><p>She backed away from him in quick steps, her hands moving along the rim of the countertop as though she were blind. In a few more feet she would be at the door. If she could get to the doorknob before he lunged at her - </p><p>“Don’t make me come over there and get you, Ally. You’re going to be a sorry little girl if I do that.” </p><p>Alice backed up until the kitchen door pressed into the small of her back. Moving on impulse, she reached behind herself and found the knob, turning and throwing the door open before she had time to think. Her father lunged at her in a quick, coiled leap, and Alice darted through the gap and slammed the door behind her. She fell down the steps into the alley, landing on her hands and knees and tearing the skin off her palms. Sunlight flew mercilessly in her face, glinting off the metal sides of the incinerator and the small graveyard of glass bottles by the communal recycling bins. Behind her, her father hit the wooden door with enough force to crack it down the centre. </p><p>“YOU GET BACK HERE RIGHT NOW, ALLY!” he bellowed behind the broken wood, and Alice scrambled frantically in the gravel until her feet found purchase on the ground. She sprinted down the alley towards the street, her arms pistoning up and down, throwing a panicked gaze back over her shoulder that made her blonde hair fly into her face. The pain from where he had hit her throbbed like a sunburn. She could feel the swelling pushing outwards from her cheekbone and knew the knob would be the size of an apple by morning - if she ever saw tomorrow morning. At the moment it seemed a distinct possibility this morning had been her last. </p><p>Roger Smith came pelting down the alley after her, her father but also something more, something that had eclipsed the person he had once been and yet retained enough of his essence that the attack remained sickeningly and blithely unsurprising. The memory of the train museum hovered in her consciousness, and Alice mentally batted it away like a hanging cobweb. There would be no love or mercy from the thing that came pounding after her in her father’s work boots. She saw murder in his eyes. She saw It in his eyes. </p><p>She ran. There were no grown-ups on the street outside her building. The little boy from apartment 4A was sitting on the crumbling front stoop, pushing a bright yellow plastic school bus over the sparse grass. A clothesline stretched across the first-floor balcony with a half-full basket of washing next to it, and a portable radio left on the porch rail across the street declared baseball scores to an empty lawn of crabgrass. Mr. Denton’s old Studebaker sat half-washed in a cracked concrete drive, a bucket of sudsy water and a swollen brown sponge drying in the heat. The little boy had enough time to look up at the girl fleeing across Lower Main and see something that would be burned into his nightmares for weeks to come: for a moment he thought Alice Smith was being pursued by a clown with sizzling orange eyes. </p><p>Alice flew across the street and ran towards the Main Street Bridge, where a trickle of Sweetwater River flowed below the city centre and ran silently underground until it came out by the Kissing Bridge in Bassey Park. She knew she was running for her life now. It meant to do more than take off her dress and check what she had done with the boys in the Barrens: It meant to kill her the way it had killed Betty Ripsom and Oscar Andrews. It meant to tear her apart. </p><p>She ran over the wooden bridge and on into the centre of town. Main Street was intersected here by Kansas and Center Streets, leading up towards the Barrens to the west and the Center Street Drug and the arcade to the east. It was the middle of the day, prime hours for shopping, but there was almost no one about. Those citizens of Riverdale that were outdoors simply stopped and stared at her, their faces betraying only a mild curiosity at the scene unfolding in front of them. They looked blank-eyed at the screaming young girl and the adult man pursuing her, and then they turned and went about their business, going into the barbershop and crossing the street to the bus terminal. A police officer sat unobtrusively in a cruiser parked in front of the Aladdin Theatre, drinking a coffee. His eyes did not raise from his drink. </p><p>Alice cut across Main Street in the path of a large truck. The driver leaned on the horn, and the front tire passed closely enough to her that she felt a hot breeze lift the back of her skirt. Tiny bits of gravel pinged at her legs. She flew across Main Street and towards the uphill slope of Kansas street, which led past the Riverdale Public Library and on to the Tracker Brothers Trucking Depot and the ballfield. The Barrens were still a mile away, but she thought they were the safest place she knew. If she could only run a little faster - </p><p>“COME BACK HERE YOU LITTLE SLUT!” </p><p>Alice glanced back over her shoulder and saw her father crossing the street in the path of another truck, as heedless of the traffic as she had been herself. She had enough time to hope wildly that it would hit him, and then her father was safely across the street and gaining on her, his face bright red and his arms swinging madly as though he were dragging himself through the air. </p><p>Alice ran past the library and a crumbling empty storefront that had yet to be repurchased as an antique store that would be named Secondhand Rose, Secondhand Clothes. She cut down the alley behind the row of warehouses that fronted Up-Mile hill, her sneakers slipping on the greasy cobblestones that were slick with motor oil and leftover fat from the butchery. Steam belched from a gaping sewer grate that most of the fat had congealed around. The backs of the warehouses were lined with overstuffed garbage bins that smelled of rotting meat, and rats the size of puppies poked hopefully through the overflow. Two men sitting on crates behind the butchery regarded her mildly, their silver lunch pails open at their feet. She could hear her father at the mouth of the alley, cursing loudly and screaming for her as he crashed through the maze of bins. </p><p>“Looks like you’re goin’ to the woodshed with your pa, little girl,” said one of the workers mildly. He was wearing a bloodstained apron that said ARMOUR MEATPACKING in faded letters. Alice ran past them and sprinted around the corner of the warehouse, where the alley should have opened back out onto Kansas street. Instead, she froze in horrified dismay, her heart pounding viciously against her tongue. At the mouth of the alley, an enormous garbage truck was idling, filling the entire opening of the alleyway from end to end. The tailgate was as tall as the second-floor windows on the meatpacking warehouse. There would be no going over or around. </p><p>Alice dropped to the ground and pulled herself under the truck. Heat spewed down on her from the underside of the engine, the exhaust pipe burning her shoulder and making her cry out in pain. Her father had been gaining steadily on her since she had turned towards the warehouses, and he dropped to his knees immediately, ducking his head to see her. She looked back and met her father’s gleaming eyes, crouched like a stray cat in the shadow of the garbage truck. </p><p>“Leave me alone!” she spat, and wriggled further towards the pavement of Kansas Street. Her hands and knees were stinging with pain, and she could smell hot exhaust and the bloated stench of rotten meat. Her dress was slimy with filth and clung damply to her spine and thighs. </p><p>“You <em> bitch, </em>” Roger Smith replied. He dropped to the pavement and began to pull himself under the truck with his forearms, shifting his hips from side to side as he dragged himself powerfully towards her. His hand flashed out towards her and grazed her ankle. Alice scrambled out from under the front end of the truck, smashing her tailbone against the oversized bumper, and then pulled herself to her feet and ran, flying along the row of warehouses and towards the relative safety of the treeline. </p><p>Two warehouses met at a slight angle about a block before the Tracker Brothers Trucking delineated the end of the row, thus creating a small alley that narrowed as it ran back away from the road to the point where the brick sides of the warehouses joined together. Alice pivoted and flew into the mouth of the culvert, pulling herself along the brick wall and dropping to a fetal crouch behind a stack of wooden crates. This alley was too small to store garbage bins or cars and had thus become a refuse of trash: shattered wood palettes and waterlogged cardboard created a sculptural jumble among the thorny dandelions growing wild up through the cement. After a moment she saw her father pound by the mouth of the covert and up the hill. </p><p>Alice stayed where she was, her arms around her knees, rocking herself lightly as she waited to see if he would reappear. What seemed like several hours later, though it was no more than twenty minutes, she saw him again on the opposite side of the road, walking back down Up-Mile Hill towards town. He walked with his hands in his pockets, the keys on his belt jingling. His face was angry and red, his shirt and work pants smeared with grime from the truck, but this did not stop him from raising a hand in a familiar greeting to a man passing on the opposite side of the street. Alice ducked her head into her knees and prayed. When she raised her head again, he had gone on by past the mouth of the alley and was gone from her sight. </p><p>Her legs and hips aching from the run, blistering pain rolling from her burned shoulder, Alice counted to one hundred and stood up, sliding her back against the rough brick wall as she approached the opening of the culvert. A wave of fear and dizziness rushed over her when she came near enough to the opening to see back down the hill. Cautiously, holding her long hair back from her head so it wouldn’t swing out of the opening ahead of her, she peered out of the mouth of the alley. Kansas Street was silent in both directions, laying still in the hazy summer heat as though awaiting her decision to stay or run. Her father was gone. </p><p>Alice looked down the hill into town and decided he must have gone back to the apartment. The question of whether <em> she </em>could ever go back surfaced suddenly in her mind, and the very thought of that, of not being able to go back home to her father, made her tremble worse than the fear of what he had almost done to her. At first, there had been terror, that odd bright hatred, the adrenaline rush of her escape, but in their absence she felt only a sore and helpless misery, mixed with shame that stung at her throat as badly as the gravel had torn her hands. It was wrong, what she had done. Daughters weren’t supposed to disobey their fathers. </p><p>But oh God, fathers weren’t supposed to <em> kill </em>their daughters, were they? </p><p>Suddenly she thought of her friends. It had been in her father, and maybe the same thing was happening to any of their parents now. They might all be in danger, and maybe not even recognizing it yet. They all trusted their parents completely. </p><p>She began to walk along Kansas street, taking deep, heavy breaths into her exhausted lungs. At first she walked with the vacant lot as her destination, hoping to find Fred in the midst of a baseball game, but the absence of voices from behind the warehouse when she reached it suggested no pickup game was in progress. Alice continued towards the Barrens, hoping at least one of her friends would be at the clubhouse. She thought she might find Hiram and FP there at least, and they would at least know where Fred was. Then they could warn the others. Make a plan. </p><p>She was coming up to the Costello Avenue Market when she stopped quite suddenly in the centre of the sidewalk. <em> No, </em> she thought, panicked and betrayed. <em> It can’t be. Not today. Not after all this.  </em></p><p>But it was. They were standing shoulder-to-shoulder across the intersection where Kansas met Costello Street, three world-class schoolyard bullies in torn-off shirtsleeves and black engineer boots. Marcus Mason and Darryl Doiley were staring fixedly at a sewer grating built into the curb, but Marty Mantle’s full attention was centred on Alice’s approach. His gaze was bright and predatory, like a shark that had scented blood. His lips curved up into a smile. </p><p>Alice turned to run. Marty caught up with her in two great long strides and grabbed a handful of her blonde hair, yanking her to a halt and severing several long hairs from her scalp. Marcus and Darryl closed in on each side of her immediately. They would have already been on her, only they had spent the last several minutes staring in a dazed way at the sewer grating from which they had been hearing a strange but persuasive voice. </p><p><em> Kill her, </em> the voice from the sewer had said. There was no doubt in either boy’s mind that the girl in question had arrived like a lamb to the slaughter. </p><p>Alice screamed, and Marty clapped a hand over her mouth and nose. His hand was hard and tasted like blood. At the bottom of his red t-shirt with the cut-off sleeves, something black and muddy lay in thick splotches across the fabric. It was so dark that it could have been chocolate syrup, only Alice had a feeling it wasn’t. She could see the blood grimed into the curves of his dirty fingernails. Sunlight glared off the taps of his boots and blinded her. </p><p>“I’m going to kill you, bitch,” Marty hissed in her ear. He lifted his free hand and brought a heavy hunting knife in front of her eyes. The handle of the knife was coated in the same muddy grime as his t-shirt. Alice watched in horror as his thumb caressed the button on the handle, releasing the thick blade from its sheath and jamming it against her throat. Across the street - she saw this very clearly, her senses heightened by distress - an older man who had been sitting on his porch suddenly got up, folded his newspaper, and went inside, barely glancing at the four kids in the road as he did so. </p><p>Alice whimpered against Marty’s palm. She couldn’t move her head even an inch - Marty’s knife would have sliced into the soft flesh above her jugular. One of the others, probably Marcus, was squeezing her already bruised arm so tightly that it was going numb. Another of them had grabbed a tight fistful of her hair and was pulling her head backwards. Her skin scraped with painstaking slowness against the surface of the blade. </p><p>Then a car turned out of Costello Avenue and left onto Kansas Street, pulling up alongside the group of kids. The car slowed, and an elderly woman leaned over to see out of the open window. </p><p>“You boys!” she shouted. “What are you doing?” </p><p>Marty’s hand slipped from over her mouth, and Alice let out a scream of pure terror. The old woman’s eyes widened hugely in her small face. Marty growled animalistically and rushed at the car, dragging Alice by her hair and jerking the thick blade away from her neck to swing it wildly in his free hand. </p><p>The woman screamed as Marty’s knife sliced down towards her window. She gripped the wheel and pulled her foot off the clutch. The car shot down the road, bounced over a manhole cover, and stalled in the centre of the street. Darryl and Marcus blinked stupidly at the ruckus as Marty crossed the road in quick strides, jerking his jeans up over his hips with a gesture that made Alice think helplessly of her father. He swiped a kick at the car’s rear bumper, denting it with the metal taps of his boot, and stabbed the knife down so that it skated along the trunk in a white wavering line. </p><p>“GET OUT OF HERE YOU DRIED UP OLD HAG! FUCK YOU!” </p><p>The car took off down the road and did not come back. Alice saw a glimpse of the woman’s frightened face out the drivers window before she disappeared. Fear and helplessness poured over her like cold water before she realized one essential truth: Marty had let go of her hair when he had crossed the road. Marcus and Darryl were staring dumbly at their leader, their arms now crossed or loose at their sides. </p><p>They had let her go. </p><p>Alice backed up in two large steps. Marty saw her leaving and turned to cross the street back towards her, closing the distance quickly as he raised the knife in his right hand. Alice waited until he was only steps away from her, and then swung her foot up and nailed him a strong kick in the balls. </p><p>Marty’s clownish smile vanished instantly. His mouth hung open, his eyes bulging, and the knife clattered free from his hand to land on the pavement at their feet. Alice stared furiously at him, slumping on the pavement with his hands cupped at his groin, and felt a wave of revulsion and hatred even stronger than that she had felt for her father. For a minute the righteous indignation that filled her made her feel almost biblical. She hocked a loogie from the back of her throat and spat directly on Marty’s head. </p><p>Marcus took a few quick steps towards her and then hesitated, looking back at Marty and Darryl to see if they would follow. Alice turned around, gathering her endurance for one last sprint, and tore off without hesitation across the road towards the slope that led down to the Barrens. </p><p>Marty climbed to his feet, using Darryl’s wrist and shoulder to haul himself ungracefully up. His face was contorted in pain and rage, bright spots of red burning in his cheeks. His lip was curled in a snarl, and the tendons stood out strongly in his heaving neck. A dribble of blood ran down his lip from where his teeth had cut through the skin. “....On…” he wheezed, slapping Darryl’s thin arm hard enough to leave a pink imprint of his hand. </p><p>“What?” Marcus asked dumbly. </p><p>“I SAID COME ON!” Marty bellowed breathlessly, scooping the switchblade up from the ground. The hatred and fervour in his face was so potent that Marcus actually stepped back from the smaller boy and winced like a child being disciplined. Marty shoved the knife hard against Marcus’ throat and jerked his chin towards the trees, his face still contorted in pain. Darryl stood still beside him, his face very calm and composed. He had his eyes on the sewer grating again, ignoring his two friends. </p><p>Marty sheathed the knife and pushed past Marcus, chucking his taller friend’s shoulder with his own. He walked down the road after Alice in short, limping steps, one hand cupping his unfortunate undercarriage. Halfway there he stopped and leaned over with his hands braced on his knees. </p><p>“We can’t catch her now, Marty,” Marcus said awkwardly. It was perhaps the longest and most intelligent sentence he had ever uttered, and it went woefully unremarked on. Marcus looked around in confusion, seeming dazed, almost hypnotized. His gaze kept drifting away from his friend’s obvious agony and towards the sewer grate in the curb. </p><p>“We’ll catch her,” Marty spat, gulping air in between staggering lurches towards the woods. He clicked the knife out again and plunged it a couple times into the air ahead of him, never checking to see if Marcus and Darryl were behind him. The smile came back to his tortured lips, wider and less controlled. “I know where she’s going.” </p><hr/><p>Alice ran through the thick grove of trees bordering the Barrens and scrambled down the embankment that led into the dense foliage. She reached the small wooden bridge where Fred liked to stash his bike and looked hopefully under it, but there was nothing there but pine needles and sod. </p><p>Panting, close to tears, she increased her pace, sprinting down the hill with nothing but momentum keeping her going. She was following a path that was visible only to her and the other six kids she played with, a path that had been beaten by her and her friends since the beginning of June. Behind her, she could hear the snapping sounds of Marty giving chase, moving dangerously quickly for someone who had had his balls pulverized more than once this summer. Alice opened up her sprint. She was nowhere as fast as Harry Clayton but was perhaps the next-quickest runner in the group, and she thought she could reach the clearing before they caught up to her. Then there were two options awaiting her: she would live or she would die. </p><p>Alice burst into the clearing where they had built the clubhouse. The trapdoor was up, and she could hear the faint sounds of music coming from it. The dread in her chest suddenly eased, and she flew towards the open trapdoor on new wings. She was praying for Fred - but when Hal’s face appeared over the rim of the hole she found herself gripped by a fervent relief that suggested it was his face she had wanted to see all along. </p><p>“Get in!” she screamed. “Close it!” </p><p>Alice ran towards the lip of the trapdoor, and without even looking down, dropped into the hole with the blind faith of the insane. Hal reached up and caught her, and they both reeled back into the hammock, knocking FP’s radio to the ground. </p><p>“Shut it,” Alice panted. “Please, hurry, they’re coming.” </p><p>“Who?” </p><p>“Marty,” Alice gasped. She could feel the threat of tears building up at the back of her throat again - not from fear this time, but because something about Hal’s appearance had given her cause to remember her father’s madness. She had lost him permanently, she knew that all at once. Her father was gone. The rushing relief that came with that knowledge was as bad as the fear she had felt with Marty’s knife against her neck. “He’s gone crazy, Hal, he tried to kill me.” </p><p>Hal reached up and pulled the trapdoor shut over their heads, sealing them in a warm darkness. He turned off the radio with a snap. Alice reached out in the dark and hugged him blindly, burying her face in Hal’s chest and beginning to cry. The bulk of his sweatshirt was welcome and comforting against her cheek. After a moment she felt Hal’s broad arms settle very gently around her back. </p><p>“Ssh, It’s okay, Alice, they won’t get us.” His voice was kind. </p><p>“It’s not that,” Alice sobbed. “It’s not that, my- my dad-” </p><p>But she couldn’t say any more. She hugged Hal even tighter, deeply grateful for the soft and sure weight of him. She was aware too that Hal, for all his shyness and reticence, was more than capable of saving both of their lives. He had been the one who had saved her and Fred in the house on Neibolt Street, and he had rescued her in the gravel pit, when he had come very close to kicking Marty Mantle’s head in. She knew that he would fight like hell to protect her again - knew this because Fred had had the same wordless hold over her all summer, since the day it had occurred to her for the first time that Fred had sent the poem. </p><p>She thought she would still fight like hell for Fred, die for him even, but sitting here in the dark with her arms around Hal, she felt a subtle and welcome burn of love stronger than anything she’d ever felt for another person. It opened in her chest like the sun coming up. It was the same feeling of relief she had felt when she’d seen Hal’s face appear over the rim of the trapdoor - it burned in her with resounding strength, a feeling like coming home to a place she’d known all along. </p><p>Alice allowed herself two more soft heaving gasps into his sweatshirt and then forced herself to sit up, embarrassed by the way she had to wipe her nose on her hand, though it was too dark to see. The darkness was not perfect - a thin ray of light fell down upon them from where the edges of the trapdoor just met the lip of the hole. Dust and silt sifted in the thin yellow beam. </p><p>They began to hear the crashing sounds of Marty and his friends approaching, the noise attaining an oddly distant quality due to their position underground. “He’s crazy, Hal,” Alice spoke up hoarsely. “He has a knife. He stabbed some old lady’s car and threatened her. I mean it’s not just us anymore. Not just kids. He’s really properly crazy.” </p><p>Hal placed a hand on Alice’s trembling arm and reflected on this information. He’d known since his first day of school that Marty was to be avoided at all costs - but back then he’d been no more than a classroom bully, cartoonish in his villainy, a mean-assed sonofabitch, sure, but one who was more likely to dump out your backpack or trip you in the hall than pull a knife. But that day Marty had tried to carve his name into his belly - he had been crazy then. Hal had seen it in his eyes. And then there was the rock fight, and the M-80s launched at Harry Clayton’s head, and now if Marty was attacking grown-ups, that meant something was really wrong. Hal came abruptly to the same conclusion that Alice had. It was using Marty somehow, had been all summer, maybe. And It would actually kill. </p><p>They sat holding each other as Marty’s gang crashed into the clearing above their heads. “They play around here,” Marty was saying, wheezing slightly from the damage to his balls. “They play down in this shithole, alright. You go that way and I’ll check over here.” </p><p>There was a horrible crunching sound from right above them, and one of Marty’s gang - it must have been Marcus from the way the roof was bowing in - was suddenly standing on the trapdoor. Dirt slipped down through the cracks in the boards onto their faces, and a mammoth shadow passed over the thin slice of sunlight. Alice ducked into Hal’s chest again, her hand clapped ferociously tightly over her mouth to keep any sound from escaping. His heart beating a lethargic, horrible drumroll in his chest, Hal looked up. More dirt shifted down onto his face. In the dimness he felt like a rabbit in a warren, waiting to be discovered by a fox. </p><p>“They got a place,” Marty said. His wheezy voice was low and horrible, intent on its purpose. “Some sort of clubhouse, I heard them say. Look up in the trees.” </p><p>The weight on top of the trapdoor moved off, the nailed boards bowing slightly under the pressure. They were strong boards - Hal had been pretty satisfied with them when they’d been building the clubhouse, but they were not thick enough to replicate the feeling of solid ground. He thought surely Marcus, dumb as he was, would recognize the bounce underfoot for what it was. But the person who had been standing above them moved off without comment. Hal felt a brief rush of hopeful exhilaration, certain that the bullies would move off further into the Barrens, scanning for a treehouse that wasn’t there - and then Marty’s voice dashed his hopes, sharp and commanding. </p><p>“Marcus, stay here and keep watch.” </p><p>Alice froze in his arms, her shoulders sagging helplessly against Hal’s chest. Above them, Marty and Darryl’s voices faded off, and Marcus began to walk back and forth across the clearing, the boards squeaking under the weight of his sneakers when he passed over the raised trapdoor. He was muttering to himself, and they could hear him smacking his fist into the meaty palm of his opposite hand. </p><p>On the one hand it was an obliquely terrifying experience - Marcus’ toe had only to nudge one of the hinges for the illusion to reveal itself - and yet Hal felt a rush of hilarity swoop over him until he thought his chest would burst from the effort of holding in a huge and explosive laugh. He felt himself shaking, and Alice lifted her head in alarm - she had thought for a frightening moment that Hal was crying, and discovered instead that he was trying with all his might to keep a straight face. She looked hurriedly away from him, afraid of setting him off when their eyes locked. Marcus moved steadily back and forth over the clubhouse roof, sending dirt down over their heads like falling snow. </p><p>Suddenly a resounding creak sounded from the boards overhead, and the trapdoor sagged quite violently in the middle. Marcus had sat down. Hal’s bright eyes and twitching lip went back to fearful in a hurry, but Alice felt her own laughter abruptly trying to break free from her chest. A giddy fog of rich and senseless hysteria washed over her, and she had to bury her face in Hal’s chest to smother the sound of her giggles. </p><p>“Ssh…” Hal warned her fiercely. The trapdoor protested Marcus’ weight with another heavy crack. Alice’s breath caught in her throat as a horrible possibility occurred to her. </p><p>“Will it hold?” she asked Hal, sensing that he would be confidently knowledgeable about the limits of his invention. She barely mouthed the words, using only the very edges of her breath to round them into existence. Her heart was pumping loudly in her ears. </p><p>“It might, if he doesn’t fart,” Hal whispered in reply. He was holding his breath too, but there was enough dry humour in the words to set Alice off into another fit of silent giggles. She buried her face back in Hal’s neck, and then Marcus really did let one off - a long and sustained trumpet blast directly over their heads. Hal drew in a sharp breath that ruffled her hair, and she knew he was very close to breaking. They clutched each other tighter, tears smarting in their eyes, and Alice felt pressure mounting wildly in her head until it throbbed. Then she heard a faint call from above the trapdoor and off to the left. </p><p>“WHAT?” Marcus bellowed in the direction of the noise. The trapdoor creaked and sagged a little further. </p><p>“GET THE FUCK OVER HERE, ASSHOLE!” Marty’s response was audible even underground. </p><p>Marcus muttered under his breath and got up off the trapdoor. It cracked ominously again as he crossed over it for the last time, and a splinter of wood the size of a baseball broke off the center of the door and fell into Hal’s lap. He picked it up with wonder, a patch of his jeans illuminated by the new band of light falling down into the space. </p><p>“Geez, five more minutes and that would have been it,” he said to her. They could hear Marcus crashing off through the brush and Marty’s hysterical shouting. Hal looked up from the wood and caught Alice’s eye. The hilarity they had both been holding in burst free at last, and they grabbed each other and laughed wildly, keeping as quiet as they could. At some point, Alice was aware her laughter was threatening to turn into sobbing again, and she covered her face and began to rock back and forth. </p><p>Hal touched her shoulder gently, his smile vanishing. “Are you all right?” </p><p>Alice lowered her hands from her face, shaking her head in reply. She told him haltingly, leaving out most of the truth: that It had taken over her father’s body and attempted to kill her in the apartment. Hal’s face softened with concern, and by the end of it he had replaced one broad arm around her back and was rubbing her spine through her dress. </p><p>“You’re right,” he said. There was a hint in his face now of something she had so often seen in Fred’s - a purposeful, unselfconscious leadership. “I’m all right, but the others might be in danger. We should go find them and warn them. About Marty, at least.” His hand moved upwards towards the trapdoor. “Can you run if we have to? I don’t know how long we have before they get back.” </p><p>“Yeah,” said Alice, and then suddenly, not knowing she was going to say it before it was out: “Thank you for the poem, Hal.” </p><p>It was dark in the clubhouse, but there was no mistaking the blush that spread rapidly over Hal’s face. His arm fell back down heavily to his lap, and he twisted his hands suddenly together. </p><p>“Poem?” he asked, his eyes fixed on the ground as though fascinated by the dirt. </p><p>“The haiku,” Alice said gently. “On the postcard. You sent it, didn’t you?” </p><p>“No,” said Hal, and he was blushing more furiously then, his eyes cast down stubbornly to the clubhouse floor. He picked up FP’s radio and righted it. “No, I don’t - I didn’t. I wouldn’t send you any poem, because - If a fat kid like me sent something like that to a girl she’d probably laugh at him.” </p><p>“I didn’t laugh. I thought it was beautiful.” </p><p>Hal looked up at her, his eyes shining. “I couldn’t write anything beautiful, Alice. Fred, maybe. Not me.” </p><p>“Fred could write okay,” Alice conceded. “But nothing as nice as that. I don’t think he’ll ever write anything as good as that.” </p><p>Hal wet his lips, looking everywhere in the clubhouse but her eyes. He lowered his head as though he’d been reprimanded by a teacher. “How did you know, Alice?” </p><p>“I don’t know. I just did.” </p><p>“I didn’t mean anything by it,” Hal blurted out quickly.  </p><p>“I hope you don’t mean that,” Alice said gently. She reached out and squeezed Hal’s hand. “I’ve had a really awful day, Hal, and I think if you mean that it’s going to spoil the rest of it.” </p><p>Hal didn’t laugh. His voice was soft but deadly serious, his blue eyes fixed on the space between his feet. </p><p>“Well, I mean, I love you, Alice, but I don’t want that to spoil anything.” </p><p>The tenderness she felt for him rose so fervently in her that her eyes brimmed with tears. “It won’t,” she said, and hugged him again. “I wanted you to say that more than anything.” </p><p>“What about Fred?” Hal asked softly, as though afraid of the answer. </p><p>“What about him?” </p><p>Hal breathed in shakily, his fingers trembling against her back. “I thought you liked him.” </p><p>Alice pulled back to look him full in the face. “I thought I did, a little. But I like you too, Hal. In fact, I love you. I really do.” </p><p>The beam of sunlight from above their heads was falling between them, illuminating one side of Hal’s face. The light caught in his eyelashes, lighting his pale skin and blonde hair in gold. Alice found the memory of her father’s attack felt suddenly far away, far from this safe underground place and the cozy silence that stretched between them, warm and loving. Suddenly Hal’s hand tightened impulsively on hers, and he got abruptly to his feet, brushing off his knees. </p><p>“We should really go warn the others. Are you ready?” </p><p>“I guess so.” Alice wiped the tears purposefully from her cheeks and stood up. She watched as Hal raised the trapdoor and peered out, stepping up onto the lowest of the steps he had built and scanning thoroughly for Marty and the others. He climbed the steps and disappeared momentarily into the world outside. For a moment when he left her line of sight Alice’s heart stopped with inexplicable fright - then his body returned to the blue rectangle of sky she could see from within the clubhouse, and she felt reassured. The blush was still on his cheeks - his face was lovely and earnest and glowing with it. </p><p>She took the hand he offered her gratefully, and when they had both climbed out of the clubhouse and shut the trapdoor behind them she picked up his hand again and squeezed it. Alice glanced up at Hal’s face with the same sudden clarity of vision that had fallen over her eyes in the Neibolt house and noticed all of him in stark relief: the lines of his strong jaw beneath the baby fat, the blue of his eyes, the sun in his fine, soft hair. Her heart began to pound. </p><p>They began to walk together towards town, their hands joined, their fingers laced tightly together. Behind them, a steady humming noise emanated from the pumping stations that lay along the banks of the stream.</p>
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<a name="section0013"><h2>13. in the tunnels</h2></a>
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    <em>“But now they were coming. They had entered Its domain under the city, seven foolish children blandering through the darkness without lights or weapons. It would kill them now, surely.” - Stephen King, It. </em>
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</blockquote><p>“Ask Mary if you don’t believe me,” FP said. He was walking companionably down Kansas Street with Mary and Hiram, having stopped in the Costello Avenue Market for ice cream on their way to the clubhouse. They had missed the showdown between Marty, Marcus, Darryl, and Alice by no more than twenty minutes. </p><p>“You are so full of shit, FP.” Hiram said. He looked enviously at FP’s rocket pop and sucked on his lower lip. Mary had made good on her promise to split a cheap ice cream sandwich with him, knowing he was short on funds, but it hardly thwarted the allure of the dripping popsicle in FP’s hand. </p><p>FP gave the popsicle a long contemplative lick. “No fake, Jake. Tell him, Mary. At your bar mitzvah, the priest takes your dick out in front of the whole temple and cuts it in half. That’s why you could never be Jewish, Hiram, you haven’t got enough to spare.” </p><p>Mary smiled dryly. “I think they’d make an exception for you, FP. They do it in private if it’s too ugly to show off.” </p><p>FP abruptly howled with laughter, nearly catapulting the remains of his ice cream off the stick and into the street. Mary watched him patiently, feeling the familiar tired enchantment that always accompanied one of FP’s outbursts, and this mingled with a small feeling of pride. She was suddenly glad that they were friends. It was a strong, painful feeling, oddly bittersweet - something like watching a movie and knowing innately the ending would be sad. She shook it off quickly. </p><p>“Guys, are you serious?” Hiram complained. He looked worriedly at Mary, whose sense of humour was usually too odd to support FP’s kidding. FP reasserted his features into solemn honesty. </p><p>“God’s honest truth. When you’re born, they take off half of it. Then at your bar mitzvah, it’s goodbye to the other half. That’s why Mary’s got nothing left.” </p><p>“Beep-Beep, FP,” said Mary, and grinned at Hiram. </p><p>Hiram scowled, recognizing he’d been had, and slugged FP hard in the arm. “You’re not funny, you know. And you’re pretty fucking mean to Mary. Our folks are Catholic. How would you like it if Mary said all that shit about you?” </p><p>“Boy, they already got me,” FP said, making an obscene gesture towards his crotch. “You thought this was all I was packing? Used to be twice this long.” </p><p>“Shut the fuck up, shithead.” </p><p>“Guys?” Mary asked. Hiram and FP looked around immediately at the low note of worry in her voice. Her smile had vanished. “Does it seem quiet to you?” </p><p>They all stopped on the curb and looked around. Riverdale <em> was </em>quiet: the centre of town was almost completely deserted. No cars could be seen in any direction. The ballfield was ahead of them at this angle, but the crack of bats and the cries of outfielders were conspicuously absent from the still summer air. </p><p>“H-H-H-Hey you gu-guys!” Fred’s voice sounded from behind them, accompanied by the grinding of bike gears. He was racing around the corner of Costello Avenue, outpacing Harry on his own bicycle, who was pedalling furiously with the effort of keeping pace. Fred stood on the pedals, the playing-cards on the spokes producing a boisterous roar, and soared up to them at nearly twenty miles an hour, backpedalling at the last second and producing a long and admirable skid-mark that went on for nearly fifteen feet. When the bike began to wobble he leaped off effortlessly and caught it by the handlebars, rushing up to FP and stopping directly in front of him. </p><p>“Hey, Freddie,” FP said easily. There had been a tentativeness about the pair in the days following their fight, but it was gone now: FP offered him the melting remains of his rocket pop without circumstance, and snatched it back once Fred got in several decent-sized licks. Harry biked up beside them some moments later, and dismounted in a single fluid motion, throwing his legs over to one side of the bike and stepping off without stopping. He was out of breath, and sweat glistened at his hairline, but his face was glowing with a smile. </p><p>“You seen Hal or Alice?” Hiram piped up. </p><p>Fred looked back over his shoulder at Harry, and FP felt a spike of uncommon jealousy arise from the familiar look that passed between them. Harry shook his head, and Fred turned back to Hiram with a frown. </p><p>“Nuh-No.” </p><p>“Aw, they’re probably at the clubhouse,” FP said, sucking hard on the rocket pop and casting the dripping wooden stick carelessly in the nebulous direction of a trash can. “Maybe Sloth’s losing his virginity.” </p><p>“Beep-Beep, FP,” Mary said disapprovingly. FP opened his mouth to reply, but she swivelled and shot him a warning look which cut the words cold. </p><p>They started towards the Barrens by unspoken agreement, Fred and Harry pushing their bikes. None of them remarked on the strange silence again, but it hung heavy and uneasy above the familiar back-and-forth of conversation. When they crossed Kansas Street away from the Costello side, Hiram suddenly stopped and pointed towards the trees. </p><p>“Shit, is that -?” </p><p>They all stopped. Hal and Alice were running towards them out of the treeline that sloped down into the Barrens, shouting something inaudible and waving their arms. Fred sped up immediately, pushing Silver’s bulk quickly across the road. The others followed. </p><p>“We can’t go down- in the Barrens!” Alice was panting when they ran up to her, clustering in a tight protective circle around the sweaty newcomers. “Marty…. Marcus… He…” </p><p>“Marty has a knife,” Hal translated haltingly, though he was decently out of breath himself.  He leaned over and planted his hands against his wide thighs. “We think he’s looking for us. Darryl and Marcus are with him. Alice says he’s gone crazy.” </p><p>“Shit, he used to be sane?” FP asked. </p><p>“What happened?” Harry spoke up. FP glanced sideways at Mary to see if his joke had landed, but the others only looked grim and frightened, their faces a circle of identical pursed lips and worried eyes. </p><p>Alice told them - a heavily abridged version, leaving out what had happened with her father and beginning when she had run into the three bullies at the corner of Kansas and Costello. When she was done, her hand crept unconsciously towards Hal’s again, and she made it lie still against her thigh with effort, missing the protective warmth of his touch. She nodded to FP. </p><p>“You got any cigarettes, FP?” </p><p>FP mucked around in his pocket and came out with a flattened package of Marlboros that he passed easily over to her. “I haven’t got a light, though.” </p><p>“Here,” said Mary, and produced a Zippo from the pocket of her shorts. Alice took it gratefully and lit a cigarette. They all stood watching her as she held it to her lips and exhaled a plume of smoke. Her hair was full of twigs and leaves, and her legs and arms were battered with scratches. There was a bright pink lump on the side of her face, fading to violet and swelling her eye slightly shut. </p><p>Fred had been silent all this time, his eyes roving over the treeline as he thought deeply. Finally he spoke, his voice oddly flat. </p><p>“Cuh-come on. Let’s go d-down there.” </p><p>“Excuse me?” Hiram asked worriedly. He touched the inhaler he was carrying in his pocket - though he understood the artifice of it, he had yet to give up keeping the reassuring weight against his thigh. “Jesus, did you not hear them, Fred? Marty’s down there.” </p><p>“He d-doesn’t oh-own it,” Fred said stubbornly. He looked at each of them in turn. “It’s nuh-not h-his. Yuh-You suh-said it, A-Alice. The B-B-Barrens are uh-uh-ours.”  </p><p>Silence fell over the group, a silence in which the emptiness of the street seemed to grow to titanic proportions. Hiram looked at Fred and felt a shiver of fear in the pit of his stomach. It was so quiet that he could hear the faint rustle of the dry wind shuffling the farmers fields to the south of town. Fred’s face was very thin and strangely adult, his eyes burning with something fiery and alive above the tired hollows that had made a permanent home on his cheeks. </p><p><em> This is it, </em> Hiram thought. His cast felt suddenly itchy, oppressively heavy on his arm. <em> Oh God, do they all know it? Am I the last one to realize? It’s today. It’s starting now.  </em></p><p>“N-No one h-has to cuh-come with me,” Fred stuttered determinedly. His eyes were blazing like hot coals. </p><p>“I’ll come,” Harry said quickly. </p><p>“I’ll go along, Freddie” said FP quietly. </p><p>“Me too,” said Hal. </p><p>Alice and Mary agreed. </p><p>“Oh shit,” sighed Hiram, fumbling for his inhaler. He stuck it in his mouth and blasted off on it. “I’ll go.” </p><p>“I don’t think so, Hiram,” FP spoke up. He glanced worriedly at him, wiping his sticky hands distractedly on his jeans. “I mean, Marty broke your arm once. Maybe you ought to stay here.” </p><p>Fred shook his head confidently. “You w-w-walk with muh-me, H-Hiram. I’ll k-keep an eh-eye on you.” </p><p>“Thanks, Fred,” said Hiram weakly. He felt a growing amazement take over him at the love he felt for the other boy. <em> I’d do anything for him, </em> he thought. <em> Die for him, I guess. If he asked me. What kind of friendship is that?  </em></p><p>Fred looked at Mary. “Yuh-you g-got your b-bird book, Mary?” </p><p>She looked back at him, and Hiram was astonished to see the same devoted love reflected in her eyes. It filled her pale face and shone tenderly from her expression. “Yeah, Freddie.” </p><p>Fred nodded. “L-Let’s go d-down.” </p><p>They went down the embankment single-file. Fred pushed his bike, and Hiram walked closely behind him, his cast held at an awkward angle against his stomach. When they reached the bridge, Harry and Fred stashed their bikes underneath. The wind had picked up, and the tall grass rattled against their shins and ankles. A white-hot streak of lightning painted itself suddenly across the sky, and they all stopped. Hiram ran into Fred’s back. </p><p>Harry had his face turned up to the sky, watching the blue give way to fast-moving grey thunderheads. “It’s coming fast,” he said uneasily. “Never saw a storm come this fast.” </p><p>“The paper didn’t say anything about rain,” Mary said anxiously. She looked around at the others. “The paper said hot and clear all day.” </p><p>Thunder growled on the horizon, and they drew closer together. Tree branches battered each other in a warm, dry wind, sending leaves and seeds spiraling down to the ground below their feet. The cover of clouds shone a dull grey above the trees. </p><p>“Cuh-come on,” said Fred. “Tuh-To the c-clubhouse.” </p><p>They began to walk the way they had walked down to the stream on the first day of summer. Hiram stayed close to Fred’s elbow, and Fred walked slowly, letting him keep up. Nerves prickled at Hiram’s spine, and he kept slapping in a paranoid way at the back of his neck, certain that mosquitos were nestling against the skin there. </p><p>“H-Hal?” Fred called suddenly. He had to lift his voice so it would carry behind him down the line. “Cuh-Come h-here.” </p><p>Hal stepped out of his place in line and came to walk beside FP. He spoke carefully, his voice low. “Yeah, Fred?” </p><p>Fred kept facing forward, leading them along the path of the stream. “They’re w-watching us, a-aren’t they?” </p><p>Hiram gulped. He had felt an unnatural awareness of being watched, but had hopefully dismissed it as his own nerves. He glanced to his left at a sudden snapping sound and drew closer to Fred’s side. </p><p>“I think so,” Hal said politely. His voice was very calm. </p><p>“W-Why haven’t t-they tuh-tried to g-get us?” </p><p>“I guess they might be stupid enough to think we’re going back to the clubhouse,” Hal said rationally. “Then they’d have us trapped.” </p><p>“Muh-muh-maybe,” said Fred. “Yuh-you suh-stay c-c-close tuh-tuh-to Ah-Alice and Muh-Mary juh-just in c-c-case.” </p><p>Hal dropped back to the end of the line. What Fred would have said if he could speak clearly was that he had given Hal this order because he sensed Hal was one of the strongest in their group. It was using Marty as Its vessel - that much he understood. Probably so that It would not have to come out itself, because It was somehow frightened of them. But he sensed the immeasurable power of It along with the fear, and Fred felt confident that whatever strength they had would be badly needed. If Its fear worked in their favor at all it was only to prolong an inevitable confrontation. </p><p>He would have told the others this, but his stutter prevented him from explaining. A stinging fury knotted in his chest when he struggled to speak, which FP had once rightfully argued would serve them poorly in a fight. For a moment doubt flooded into his mind. They were only seven kids, and their leader could not speak to give them orders. Hal and Harry were both very strong, and the others had been immeasurably brave thus far - </p><p><em> But oh God, it’s not enough. Oscar was brave. The only thing he was ever afraid of was the dark. These are my friends. Hiram’s got a broken arm. </em> Fred slowed on the path, almost whirled around and charged back for the safety of the street. <em> Oh God, why did I lead them down here?  </em></p><p>But he knew very well. He had led and they had followed because nowhere in Riverdale was safe. If they had feigned retreat and gone home to their empty houses, It would follow them as It had burst out of Alice’s bathroom drain and pulled Oscar into the Witcham Street sewer grate. Better to go directly to It. Better to be all together. </p><p>
  <em> This is it, then. Oscar on one end of It, me and my friends on the other. And then it will stop. For twenty-seven years at least, that’s what Harry said. And maybe there always has to be something like this, some sacrifice or some terrible thing to end it, but it always comes back. It comes back and starts all over and when it does -  </em>
</p><p>“They luh-luh-let it h-h-happen,” Fred stuttered. He had not been paying attention to where he was going and was suddenly aware that blood was running down his shins from walking through a thorny club of blackberry bushes. He stared off at the treeline, his mind spinning, his skin prickling with the feeling of being watched. “T-They luh-luh-” </p><p>“Fred?” Mary stood quietly on the path, small and neat in her chinos and polo shirt. There were still leaves tangled in Alice’s hair. FP had his arm around Hiram’s shoulders. Harry stared fervently at Fred as though reading his mind. Fred turned to face them all, his heart pounding with love and with fear for them. </p><p>“I luh-luh-luh-luh-”</p><p>
  <em> (Oh Christ, just let me talk, just let me say it without stuttering, he THRUSTS HIS FISTS AGAINST THE POSTS HE THRUSTS HIS FISTS AGAINST THE POSTS just let me get this out, just let me talk, the posts and still insists, the posts and still insists, please, the ghosts, PLEASE JUST LET ME TALK-) </em>
</p><p>“I luh-luh-luh-l-led you duh-down huh-here b-b-b-b-because n-no puh-puh-place is s-s-safe,” Fred said. Spit flew from his lips and wet his chin, his chest rising and falling erratically as he sucked in breath between words. His cheeks were burning red. No one made a joke. FP had his hands shoved deep in his pockets, his face turned helplessly to Fred’s, his eyes pleading. Fred waved his hand at the surrounding trees. </p><p>“Th-th-th-th-this t-t-town is Ih-It. Ruh-Riverd-duh-dale is Ih-It! W-W-W-Whatever h-happens t-to us, th-they w-won’t suh-see ih-it. They wuh-won’t c-c-cuh-care. T-They luh-luh-<em> let </em> it h-happen. Ih-It’s o-only uh-us. A-A-All we c-c-can duh-duh-do is tuh-try t-t-to fuh-finish w-what we suh-suh- <em> started. </em>” </p><p>Alice thought of the old man on his porch, getting up and folding his paper and going back inside while Marty held a knife to her neck. FP remembered the emptiness of Mary’s house when they had stopped there for lunch. Mary had been surprised by her mother’s absence - the car was gone, and there was no note left on the Frigidaire. She had made them all egg salad sandwiches with a worried look on her face. </p><p>Hiram thought of his own mother. There had been no anticipated cry from the sofa about the nasty boys he played with, about being home before curfew or staying out of the woods. She hadn’t checked to be sure he had his medication, hadn’t warned him about overexerting his healing arm. She had just gone on eating her lunch and staring at the television screen from her recliner. As though she had no son at all. As though he had become a ghost. </p><p>“If we could get out of this town somehow,” FP spoke up. Thunder boomed far off, and he winced, adjusting his glasses. “If we could get out of this fucking town, we’d be safe.” </p><p>“Beep-Beep, FP,” Alice said somberly. There was something wet and hurt in her eyes, longing and grief that made her look older.</p><p>“Yeah, that’d be nice,” said Mary, with unusual vehemence. “It’d be nice if we were grownups. Grownups can go anywhere they want. If we were grownups, it’d all be just peachy, wouldn’t it?” </p><p>That was when the first rock flew out of the bushes and clipped Fred’s ear. He gasped and raised his hand to his head, his fingers coated in blood when he pulled them away. Harry whirled around, groping already on the ground for a weapon. Marty Mantle was standing in the opening of a path to their left, an emotionless smile carving his cheeks into a grotesque mask. </p><p>“Teach you to throw rocks, Losers Club,” said Marty. Or at least the voice and the face belonged to Marty. He stood below the darkening gray sky with a blazing heat in his empty eyes, a bloody stump of a knife protruding from one of his clenched fists, his once carefully maintained appearance decamped into a wild portrait of tattered clothes and blood-streaked hair. The thing they called It sizzled from him like lightning. </p><p>They backed away in a pack, ready to bolt. Marcus and Darryl joined Marty on the path, stepping out of the thick foliage behind him with identical grins on their grotesque faces. Marcus hefted a large stone in his hand, which flew over Fred’s head and crashed into the bushes. Thunder lulled in the distance. </p><p>“H-Hiram,” Fred said frantically. “Duh-Do you ruh-ruh-r-remember th-the puh-puh-pu-” </p><p>“The pumping station,” Hal filled in. “The drain near the stream where I met you guys.” He looked quickly back at Fred. “Is that where we’re supposed to go?” </p><p>Just then a barrage of rocks flew from their tormentors. One smashed hard into Fred’s cheekbone, and Harry had to catch him as he collapsed. Fred’s vision blurred. For a moment he felt nothing but a spreading numbness from the site of impact, and then a splintering pain bloomed hotly into his cheek, blotting out everything but the rolling sound of thunder. </p><p>“Teach you to throw rocks, you stuttering freak!” Marty yelled. His voice was strangely amplified in the swelling silence of the gathering storm. “How do you like this?” </p><p>Fred swiped at his battered cheek, wiping the blood on his jeans. FP let out a cry and lunged for Marty, scooping up a clod of dirt and throwing it wide. </p><p>“FUCK YOU, ASSHOLE! YOUR MOTHER EATS SHIT AND YOUR DAD BLOWS DEAD RATS!” </p><p>“Tuh-Take us t-there!” Fred yelled at Hal and Hiram. A rock from Darryl whistled above his head. “Ih-hi-hit’s the puh-pl-place! The wuh-way in! The wuh-way to It!” </p><p>“Fred, how can you know that?” Hiram begged. </p><p>“I duh-duh-do!” In the corner of his eye, he saw a gleam of silver as Marty’s knife emerged from his pocket and flicked open. Fred grabbed the back of FP’s shirt and pulled him quickly out of harm’s way. “TUH-TUH-TUH-TAKE US! QUH-QUH-QUICK!” </p><p>Hiram turned and ran. The wind sent the branches flurrying together above his heads, and he felt the first drops of rain landing on the back of his neck. He ran towards the rushing sound of the river, clumsily keeping his footing on the uneven ground that rose in rooty bumps and tangled clumps of bracken below his feet. The foliage grew wet with the falling rain, and he skidded several times, but caught himself and kept lurching forward through the green towards the sound of water. The others were practically stepping on his heels, but he managed to stay at the head of the pack, his breath tearing painfully in and out of his lungs. He thought hysterically of Coach Black, and a giddy laugh launched itself out of his mouth as he vaulted over a clump of poison ivy. </p><p>
  <em> (Hiram runs very fast for a boy his age, yes he does, runs very fucking fast INDEED LOOK AT ME NOW COACH BLACK LOOK AT ME RUN) </em>
</p><p>Marty’s shouting blended with the churning of Sweetwater River as it got louder and louder. Hiram ran without questioning his direction, following a well-developed internal compass that had never failed him. He could get to the place where he and Fred had built the dam easily, but he had never seen the pumping station Hal had told them about, and had no idea which of the large cement cylinders near the water was the right one. </p><p>“WHERE IS IT?” he shouted at Hal. “THE PUMP?” </p><p>“THIS WAY!” Hal looked less confident, his white face a pale moon against the rain-splattered trees. He turned and lumbered through a grove of elms, running parallel to the water and turning his head frantically from side to side. The others followed him. Hiram found himself thinking Hal was running pretty damn fast too - all in all, the seven of them probably could have put Coach Black’s wildest dreams to shame at a relay event. Hal burst out onto the banks of the river and froze, causing the others to pile up into his back. Mary shrieked. Hal turned in a frantic circle and set his sights on a gnarled elm that leaned at an angle some ways downstream. </p><p>“THERE!” he shouted, relief breaking over his face. “THIS WAY!” </p><p>They dashed towards the leaning trunk and clambered over it. Marty and the others burst out onto the banks after them, still doggedly aiming a barrage of stones at the younger kids as they kicked up great fans of water with their boots. Harry and FP dropped to their knees on the other side of the fallen tree and grubbed in the riverbed, using the trunk as a barricade as they peppered their attackers with a returning onslaught of ammunition. </p><p>“See how you like it!” Harry screamed over the rain, aiming a large rock at Marty’s face that made crushing contact with his front two teeth. Fred joined him at the front of the group and hurled a fusillade of small rocks at the older kids, his pitcher’s arm working with aggressive and reliable efficiency. Between them they got the bigger boys to retreat, the three of them crashing back into the trees away from the river. Hiram watched their retreating silhouettes with alarm, craning his neck to chart their progress through the brush. </p><p>“They’re going around,” he warned in a frightened voice as the heel of Marty’s engineer boot slipped out of sight through the leaves. </p><p>“S-S-S’okay,” said Fred. He was breathing heavily, massaging his shoulder. “Luh-Lead on, H-H-Hal.” </p><p>Hal continued away from the embankment, following his memory of the day he had outpaced Marty  through the brush on the last day of school. The insect-like humming he had followed was no longer audible, but in a small wooded clearing he came upon exactly what he was looking for: the short cement cylinder that led down into the sewer system. It was silent: the pump had stopped working. Rain fell in fat drops onto the concrete rim and the manhole cover, splattering on the yellow letters that spelled RIVERDALE SEWER DEPT. </p><p>“W-W-We guh-gotta g-get the luh-lid off,” Fred directed. He braced himself against the lip of the cylinder, his fingers curving into the wet grooves on the manhole as though he intended to shift its weight entirely on his own. Two of his fingernails were broken, and his hands were streaked with blood. “H-H-Help m-me.” </p><p>The others lined up beside him, pressing their hands against the heavy metal cap. Hal shoved experimentally before they were all settled and found it was heavier even than he’d expected. The iron circle sat stubbornly atop the cylinder as though fused to the cement. Rain danced across the metal surface. </p><p>“On th-th-th-three w-we sh-shove-” Fred stuttered. “O-One-” </p><p>“Two-” Hal added breathlessly. </p><p>“Three!” </p><p>They heaved in unison. The lid slid a paltry quarter-inch across the flat surface of the cylinder, exposing only the uppermost rim of the concrete. Hal thought frantically of the crowbar hanging on the wall of the Andrews garage - if they had that now, moving the heavy lid would be worlds easier. But they had nothing. </p><p>“Again,” Fred panted stubbornly. They lined up, the rain battering their heads. Hal caught Mary’s wild, tearful eyes as she took her place at Hiram’s side, but she did not move her hands from the edge of the heavy metal lid. When Fred gave the command she pushed as hard as she could. </p><p>This time the cover slid further across the concrete, exposing a fingernail’s width of gap. The darkness below this pocket of space was the same complete blackness that they had seen in the hole in the Neibolt Street bathroom. Hal felt that the only thing keeping him from going insane was Fred’s surety - and Alice, Alice who was pressed against his side, her small hands planted on the metal and her blonde hair dripping with rain. </p><p>It took eight shoves for them to move the cap to the opposite side of the cylinder. “Stand back,” Harry warned them, and they stepped back from the pipe in a solemn circle. The circular cap overbalanced, wavered on the very edge of the cylinder, and fell to the muddy ground with a crash that gouged a heavy slice out of the riverbed. </p><p>They all looked down. The cement structure that had appeared so diminutive from the outside descended at least ten feet underground into a circular pool of black water. It widened as it went down, running into a thick and immeasurable darkness. An iron ladder was soldered vertically to the curved side. The pumping machinery sat silent in the middle, far below them, barely visible in the dim light. Fred thought he could just see the wide bore of another pipe yawning off the main cylinder. </p><p>“Je-zus,” said FP emphatically. He nudged Hiram. “Anyone got a quarter to make a wish?” </p><p>Harry reached down and gave the iron ladder a hearty shake. It held tight to the side of the pipe. </p><p>“Guh-Get on m-my buh-back, H-H-Hiram,” Fred ordered. “H-H-Hold tuh-tight. Luh-Like a puh-piggyback.” </p><p>“I’m scared, Fred.” </p><p>“I-I-I am t-t-too.” Fred crouched so that Hiram could wrap his one good arm around his neck. When his friend’s weight had settled onto his back he stood up and swung a foot up over the lip of the cylinder, feeling for the top rung of the ladder. He held the lip carefully, maneuvering down the first rung. Then the second. In the woods behind them, they could hear the snapping and crashing of Marty and his friends blundering through the brush. Marty’s belligerent yelling was coming closer. </p><p>“Once I’m duh-down y-you all fuh-follow m-me,” Fred directed. He sucked in a deep gulp of air: Hiram’s cast was pressing tight against his throat and making it difficult to breathe. </p><p>“Test the rungs before you stand on them,” Mary cautioned. The wind blew her red curls about her face. “Make sure they can support your weight.” </p><p>Fred nodded. He paused, his eyes briefly sweeping the rain-sodden trees, knowing this could be his last breath of fresh air. Then he slid one foot off the rusted iron rung he was standing on, feeling the void below him for the next step. </p><p>FP reached out and laid his hand over Fred’s on the rim of the cylinder. Fred stopped and looked up at him. On Fred’s back, both arms now constricting the taller boy’s windpipe, Hiram bent his face into Fred’s neck and squeezed his eyes shut. Marty screamed something unintelligible off through the trees. </p><p>FP’s eyes held Fred’s gaze, horrible in their honesty. “I don’t want to die, Freddie,” he said quietly. </p><p>“I know,” said Fred. His voice was very soft. They stared at each other for an unbearable moment before FP let his hand go. He stepped back. </p><p>“Don’t let go, Hiram,” FP said. It had the same cadence of his teasing, but his voice trembled badly. Fred began to descend the ladder, hand over hand, feeling each rung with his foot before he tentatively shifted his weight onto it. Hiram’s deadweight hung off his neck like a vice. He expected the ladder to stop at some point, but rungs kept appearing below his shoes, bearing him down a seemingly endless passage towards the lapping water below. His hands and wrists began to ache from moving, and his wet fingers became numb and useless on the rungs. </p><p>The broken pump rose up next to him as he descended, a titanic rusty hulk in the centre of the pipe. The opening of the cylinder above him shrunk to the size of a dinner plate. The rungs of the ladder were frighteningly slippery, and the muscles in his arms trembled from how tight he was clutching the iron bars. </p><p>Alice came next, then Mary. FP followed them, the impact of his high-tops sending vibrations out from each rung that made the ladder shudder in Fred’s grip. Hal came next, his rear end sagging just above FP’s upturned face. </p><p>“This is a nice view, Sloth,” FP called tremulously up the ladder. </p><p>“Shut up, FP,” Mary chastised him feebly from somewhere over Fred’s head. Her voice sounded very small. </p><p>Fred’s foot touched cold water and he jumped. He slipped his foot down, feeling for another rung under the surface of the water. There was one more, and then his foot hit flat concrete at the bottom. He stepped off the ladder and let Hiram off his back. When Hiram’s death grip came away from his throat he sucked in a deep, full breath of air and felt briefly lightheaded. </p><p>Harry was the last to descend. He paused before stepping onto the topmost rung of the ladder, listening to the blundering progress of Marty, Marcus and Darryl through the woods. He thought they were passing by the pumping station a little to the left, and shook his head in detached bewilderment. Those three would never do the game show circuit, as his dad would have said. </p><p>Suddenly Marcus bellowed. “THERE HE IS! MARTY! LOOK!” </p><p>Harry turned his head sharply. Marcus stood about six feet away from him on the opposite treeline, pointing at the cylinder and shouting his head off. Harry had no idea how he had approached so silently. The crashing to his left changed direction, and Harry’s head snapped back in time to see Marty and Darryl sprinting madly out of the trees towards him. Marty’s knife was held out in front of him, soaked to the handle with blood. His lips were peeled back in a disgusting snarl, and his eyes bulged from their sockets. </p><p>Darryl was running in the lead, and Marty shoved him aside so violently that Darryl fell on his hands and knees and skidded about ten feet down the slight incline, yelping in surprise and pain. Marcus stood dumbly watching this from the opposite side of the bank, not making a move himself to attack beyond helpfully pointing at the place Harry was standing. </p><p>Harry swung his leg over the cylinder and found the top rung of the ladder. Below him, Hal was approaching the bottom. FP had just stepped off and was craning his neck to look up - Harry could see the reflection of his glasses shining in the dark pool of water. </p><p>Marty, rushing towards the cylinder at top speed, saw what Harry was doing and screamed a long unintelligible stream of profanity that seemed to be directed across the clearing at Marcus. Marcus started running towards the cylinder and wiped out hard, slipping on the wet grass and going down hard on his back. </p><p>A grin broke out over Harry’s lips. Balancing on the second rung of the ladder, he slammed his hand into the crook of his opposite elbow and thrust his fist skyward, popping his middle finger up triumphantly and staring directly into the whites of Marty’s eyes. </p><p>“I’M GONNA FUCKING KILL YOU!” Marty bellowed. </p><p>“Fuck you!” Harry yelled, laughing. He couldn’t remember laughing this hard in a long time. “Come and get me!” </p><p>He scooted down the ladder as fast as he could, going hand over hand the way he’d scale the rope climb in gym. When he was only a few rungs from the bottom he dropped down, landing with a splash in the freezing cold water where Hal and FP both reached in unison to steady him. All seven of them were clustered in a tight circle around the pumping machinery, shoulder to shoulder. They were up to their ankles in water, and Hiram’s jeans were wet through right up to his kneecaps. </p><p>Marty’s blood-streaked face appeared in the circular opening far above them. He saw the ladder and his eyes lit up, his cheeks curling into a grin of grotesque delight. Harry thought at that moment he even <em> looked </em> like the clown - Pennywise who had turned cartwheels before the children who would die hunting for chocolate eggs in the gleaming maze of the Ironworks. That leering face was briefly the face of Riverdale itself - soulless, hungry, looming with some Herculean evil. </p><p>“Here I come,” Marty announced gleefully, swinging one leg over the lip of the concrete cylinder. “Gonna kill you all.” </p><p>“W-W-When h-he guh-gets d-d-down, puh-puh-pull h-him under,” Fred ordered. He spoke loudly and confidently, his voice amplified in the tight space. “H-H-H-Hold him duh-down.” </p><p>“You got it, Fred,” Harry agreed grimly. </p><p>FP saluted. “Righty-O, Gov.” </p><p>Marty paused and looked down over his shoulder. The seven kids watched as a momentary uncertainty passed over his insane face. Alice was the first to understand his predicament. It was too high and dangerous for Marty to jump without hitting the pump in the center - he would have to descend slowly, and here they were waiting, surrounding him. If Marcus and Darryl were still out there they’d have to make it down the ladder one at a time if they came at all. Marty had the knife, but there were more of them. And Marty was afraid. </p><p>“Come on, Marty,” Alice called sweetly. “Don’t you want to come get us?” </p><p>“Yeah, or are you chicken?” Hiram called up. FP made obliging clucking noises. </p><p>Marty glared down at them, his face the same colour as his tattered red shirt and the blood on the knife handle, and then he climbed back up and out of the cylinder, disappearing momentarily from their sight. The Losers Club sent up a barrage of curses and insults after him. </p><p>“O-O-Okay,” said Fred. His eyes were deadly serious again. He slid along the curved wall of the belly of the pumping station and turned to look into the mouth of the inflow pipe, which carried water from elsewhere in the Barrens into the small cylinder where they stood. It was perhaps five feet in diameter, large enough for them to fit but small enough that they would have to duck their heads to get through. “It’s th-th-through th-there.” </p><p>A rock the size of a church bell suddenly appeared over the rim of the hole and flew down into the pumping station with a resounding splash. Hiram screamed, and Hal pulled him quickly out of harm’s way. Marty’s face appeared again in the circle of sky, joined now by his two friends. Marcus Mason looked even more stupid at this angle - his eyes were dull with confusion and he seemed completely bewildered by the sight of the seven of them crouched in the pump like drowned rats. </p><p>“How do you like that?” Marty screamed. He lobbed another enormous boulder in - this one hit the pumping machinery and rebounded into the wall, sending sharp shards of rock spraying out from the impact. Harry covered his face and took a nasty cut in the back of his hand. “Gonna bash your little heads in, freaks!” </p><p>“It’s a stand-off,” Hal said. “They can’t get down, and we can’t get up.” </p><p>“We’re n-not supposed to get up,” Fred said seriously. He was still standing in front of the mouth of the inflow pipe. “W-We’re n-not e-ever suh-supposed to g-get up a-again.” </p><p>Mary spoke what they were all thinking. “Fred, do we have to?” </p><p>“What else is there?” Alice asked suddenly. She was shivering in her wet dress, and her long hair was tangled down her back, mixed with rainwater and mud. Her eyes were wild. “Get killed by Marty? Or something worse in town? Our own parents?” She looked at each of them in turn, her lips set in a stubborn line. “We have to go. You all know it.” </p><p>The energy in the group seemed to waver, fear rising thick and tangible in each of their faces. It was FP who broke the silence before it could catch. His voice was shaky and taut. </p><p>“What was the ritual you told us about, Harry? The one in the library book?”  </p><p>“The Ritual of Chud,” Harry said softly. </p><p>“It bites your tongue, and you bite its, right?” FP asked. “And then you tell jokes?” </p><p>“Y-Yeah.” </p><p>“Well, I can’t think of any right now,” said FP hoarsely. “But I’m sure I’ll come up with some on the way. Go on, Fred. If we have to do it.” </p><p>“L-Line up buh-behind m-me,” Fred directed, giving FP a grateful look. “E-Everyone k-keep a h-hand on the sh-sh-shoulder of the puh-person in f-front of you.” </p><p>They straggled into order. The open bore of the sewer pipe yawned ahead of them into darkness. Fred looked back once to make sure everyone was in line. </p><p>“Come on out!” Marty Mantle screamed above them. “I can wait up here all day, assholes!” </p><p>“He’s gonna be waiting a while,” said FP, and though he was at the back of the line where no one could see him, he forced the trembling corners of his mouth into a queer, lopsided smile. FP put his hand on Harry’s shoulder, ahead of him, and stared into the dark mouth of the pipe. He couldn’t see anything at all. He thought that his feet would never move, but when Harry began to walk he took small, mincing steps forward, the sewer water soaking mercilessly into his shoes. </p><p>Fred led the way into the darkness. </p><hr/><p>They moved through the sewer with their hands on each other's shoulders, shuffling in the near black. The lapping of water around their ankles felt very loud. FP still had Mary’s Zippo lighter in his jeans pocket, and he could have held it aloft for light - but to do so would mean letting go of the muscular warmth of Harry’s shoulder, becoming briefly untethered from their chain in this malevolent dark. </p><p>Also, FP had a feeling he didn’t <em> want </em> to see what was down here. They were currently wading through Riverdale piss and shit, he had accepted that much, but at some point something soft floated up to his leg and bumped it, and he felt currents of revulsion pulse through his body from the point of impact. That small soft thing might have been anything - and the kinder options were a drowned animal or a baby’s sodden diaper. The other possibilities - he didn’t want to think about those. The missing kids would be down here, he knew that very clearly. There was nowhere else. </p><p>They turned an elbow in the pipe, and now suddenly the solid darkness was becoming more grey. FP couldn’t see ahead to the others, but he could see the faint shape of Harry in front of him, orienting himself by the sloped angle of Harry’s neck. They were moving steadily downhill, in the direction of a watery roaring noise. FP looked up and realized the meagre light that leached into the space must come from a network of storm drains, the ones set into the curbs and gutters of Riverdale, even the manhole covers that spotted the town streets. They were under the town, under those streets - deep under, if the absent quality of the light filtering down to them and the downturned angle of their pipe were anything to go by. </p><p>The roaring grew louder the more they walked, and soon they came to its source, a dim concrete shaft about six feet wide. They climbed out of the round pipe and stood blinking in the water-logged room, which seemed to FP like the inside of a castle’s square turret. A sewer grating on the wall ahead of them was dumping buckets of water down like a waterfall. Years of salt and mineral had inscribed permanent running stains below the grate. Three pipes led off this main shaft, each dumping more water into the shaft where they were standing. The water passing out of the first pipe was almost clear, while the second carried what Hiram had called greywater back in June. The third pipe was moving something thick and sludgy. The reflection of the meagre light in the lapping water danced over the gray concrete wall and their pale faces. </p><p>“We ought to take a class trip down here,” FP spoke up. He covered his face with the back of his hand: the stench was enormous. “Hey, Fred? We could get Mr. Carson to lead it.” </p><p>“Wh-which one, H-H-Hiram?” Fred asked. </p><p>He directed this question to Hiram for the same reason he had called upon him to find the concrete pumping-station, for the same reason they had sought Hal’s counsel on the building of the clubhouse and for the reason the group always turned unspokenly to Fred when there was some great decision to be made. It was simply Hiram you always asked when you needed to know which way to go. Hiram was the kind of person who could find his way around blindfolded, consulting some inexplicable mental compass to get you back to where you started. Fred worried about getting lost in the Barrens when he and FP played alone, but the thought never frightened him when Hiram was there. He felt the same calm surety now. </p><p>“Well, that depends, Freddie.” Hiram replied evenly. </p><p>“On wuh-what?” </p><p>Hiram swallowed. “Where we want to go.” </p><p>“Under the centre of town,” Harry spoke up immediately. “It’ll be there. Doesn’t anyone think that?” He looked at them all expectantly, his dark skin glowing in the watery light. “We’re going into Riverdale’s heart.” </p><p>Hiram pointed wordlessly at the third pipe. He swallowed thickly and found his voice. “Centre of town’s that way.” </p><p>“Great,” FP moaned. “I <em> knew </em> you’d say that, Hiram. Boy, I can’t wait to write about this for my summer experience essay.” </p><p>“Oh God,” Alice spoke up suddenly. “Do you hear that?” </p><p>They all did. Impossibly, his voice floating to them from a great distance through the curved track of the pipe through which they had come, Marty Mantle was still coming. They could hear his screaming echoing along the maze of tunnel behind them, heady and garbled, interspersed with grunts and splashing. A great clamour of footfalls accompanied these sounds, far too many for one person. The others must still be with him, scrambling through the pipe towards them. How Marty had persuaded Darryl and Marcus to climb into the mouth of the sewer, Alice had no idea, but she remembered that blade against her neck and figured Marty could be pretty persuasive when he wanted to be. Also, there had been something in their eyes when they’d watched him threaten her. She had seen the same orange flicker in her father’s pale blue irises. </p><p>They went one by one into the pipe, Hiram leading this time with Fred at his heels. The light stayed behind them in the shaft, fading to shades of darker gray and then that all-encompassing blackness, so heavy and impenetrable that it seemed to lay upon their cheeks and arms like a curtain. Alice held tightly to Hal, who was ahead of her. </p><p>“E-Everyone suh-still h-here?” Fred called back through the pipe. </p><p>“I need some light, Fred,” Hiram said from ahead of them. The watery slogging sound of their footfalls almost drowned out his words. “I don’t know which way to go if I can’t see which way the pipe runs.” </p><p>FP took out his lighter and flicked it, illuminating the narrow tunnel. This pipe was smaller than the first, and their heads scraped the top, the sides near enough that Alice could only touch them by caging her elbows flat to her body. The murky liquid waste they were wading through rose up to mid-thigh. Mary slipped, reached out to steady herself on the wall of the pipe, and suddenly burst into tears. </p><p>“Don’t, man,” FP protested, slipping an arm around her. He laughed uneasily. “If you cry, we’ll all cry.” </p><p>“I hate it here,” she sobbed. “I hate being dirty like this, and I hate not knowing where I am- I <em> hate </em> it, Fred.” </p><p>FP looked worriedly at Fred, who closed his arms around Mary from the other side and hugged her tightly. Hal joined him, and they all piled on, FP still holding the lighter aloft and Hiram curling his one good arm around FP’s back. Alice had time to think longingly of Fred’s RAYOVAC camping lantern, sitting uselessly in the cubby beneath the clubhouse stairs. Then a bellow from Marty made them all jump - the acoustics in the pipe carried his voice as loudly as if he were immediately behind them. </p><p>“WE’LL GET YOUUUUUUU-” </p><p>“Yeah, come and get us!” FP suddenly yelled back. Mary watched him with wide eyes. His voice ping-ponged off the sides of the pipe. “You’ll feel right at home here, it smells just like your mother!” </p><p>Suddenly a scream rose from the pipe behind them - not a scream of rage, but a scream of such pure pain and terror that FP dropped the lighter into the stream of shit they were standing in. Fred could feel Mary trembling against his side, her muscles as taut and tense as piano wire. FP picked the lighter up and flicked it frantically, holding the weak wavering flame uselessly back towards the black mouth of the pipe behind them. </p><p>Then a muffled cacophony of sound rose out of the darkness- tearing and splashing and confused screams, a loud meaty ripping sound that echoed horribly in the small space. Alice clapped her hands over her ears. </p><p>“S-Something got one of them,” Hal said. His face was very grave and nauseous. “Oh God, something got one of them.” </p><p>“Darryl,” Hiram said. “That was Darryl, I think.” </p><p>The muffled splashing continued from the other entrance of the pipe. Fred shook his head to clear it and turned to what he could see of Hiram in the dim glow of their single flame. His eyes and the wet tips of his hair glinted gold. </p><p>“W-Which w-w-way, H-H-H-Hu-Hiram?” </p><p>Hiram said nothing about how badly Fred had stuttered his name. He pointed numbly at a Y joint just ahead, which led away in a new direction perpendicular to the pipe they were travelling through. “This way, if we want to go under the middle of town.” He looked around at Fred, his face very white even in the meagre light from FP’s Zippo. “We’re really doing this, aren’t we, Freddie?” </p><p>“H-Hold onto each other,” Fred directed. “Luh-like b-before.” </p><p>The others silently reached for the shoulder of the person in front of them. Fred gripped the sharp hollow of Hiram’s neck. He had spoken with confident authority, sensing that the group required his belief, but his father’s warnings about playing in the sewers were foremost in his thoughts. They wouldn’t need to wait around for whatever had killed Darryl if they got lost - exposure or starvation or drowning would get them soon enough. If today was the day Hiram’s foolproof sense of direction finally failed them, they might wander in these black tunnels for the rest of their lives. </p><p>Fred couldn’t follow Hiram’s logic - he made confident rights and lefts seemingly at random, which spiked Fred’s anxiety rather than allaying his concern. The network of pipes widened and narrowed as they descended, at one point forcing them to crawl claustrophobically on their hands and knees. They had left all the active pipes far behind them now. The thundering sound of water diminished as they moved, and the pipes they were moving through were still, thick with ancient mold underfoot. Their feet shuffled through a carpet of long-rotted leaves and twigs, bloated and spongy. Everything was damp, and yet the air smelled very dry. The smell of human waste had been replaced by something dusty and ancient - something that smelled to Harry like sun-warmed feathers in a dry, dusty nest. </p><p>FP identified the smell as a moldy old flannel jacket. To Hal it was the stale musk of a mummy’s ancient bandages. Below this stench there was something thicker and more evil - something that smelled bloody and raw. <em> That’s what It smells like, </em> Fred found himself thinking. <em> It’s been down here, alright. We’re getting close to It.  </em></p><p>Hal suddenly leaped back with a cry. The tunnel had widened out until they could walk side-by-side, and he grabbed Harry’s wrist, who was nearest to him. </p><p>“Bones, Fred,” he said, and suddenly looked very scared. “There are bones.” </p><p>FP stepped forward bravely, holding his lighter aloft. They all regarded a pile of gleaming white bones at the edge of the pipe, nestled among a shrivelled length of dark green cloth. Fred thought it might have been the uniform that sewer workers wore - and immediately resolved he would never voice this suspicion to any of his friends. A black scrap of fabric might have been a toolbelt sat almost neatly next to the pile. The skull was crushed in half, and one blank eye-socket regarded them blearily in the guttering flame from the lighter. </p><p>“Keep guh-going,” Fred said encouragingly. “Duh-Do you know wh-where we a-are, H-Hiram?” </p><p>“Under Up-Mile Hill, I think,” Hiram’s voice was very small. “But Fred, we’re - we’re really deep. I don’t think anybody would ever put a sewer pipe this deep. There’s not even water anymore.” </p><p>“How deep do you figure we are, Hiram?” FP asked nervously. </p><p>“At least a quarter of a mile. I don’t know.” Hiram lifted his inhaler blindly to his lips and pressed it there without releasing the trigger, comforted by its familiar weight. Finally he sucked in a deep breath and shoved it back in his pocket. “This is really messed up, you know that?” </p><p>A scream abruptly bloated out of the pipe behind them, causing them all to jump. They could hear the echoing discord of ragged animal panting and the metallic thudding of damp sneakers on the tunnel floor. Mary remembered the squelching footsteps on the Standpipe stairs and shuddered. </p><p>“-GONNA GET YOU SONS OF BITCHES, I’M GONNA FUCKING GET YOU!” </p><p>“Jesus Christ, he’s still coming,” Hal said. The expression on his face was almost awed. </p><p>“He’s too stupid to know better,” said FP. He looked at the narrow tunnel that sloped down below their feet, averting his eyes from the neat pile of bones. “We going the right way, Hiram?” </p><p>“We’re going towards the center of town,” Hiram said. “That’s all I can tell you.” </p><p>“You think there’s a McDonalds or something down here? I could use a snack.” </p><p>“-I’M GONNA FUCKING KILL YOU LITTLE BRATS!-”</p><p>“How far away do you think they are?” Harry had turned to look back into the bore of the pipe behind them. The blackness that ran back through the network of pipes was loathsome and absolute. Dark bulged outward into their shadowy circle with menace. “I can’t tell with the echoes.” </p><p>“It doesn’t matter,” Alice said shakily. “We’re in it ‘till the end, either way.” </p><p>They continued down the pipe in twos. Fred and Hiram walked in front, Alice and Mary behind, Hal and FP next with Harry at the back. It seemed to Fred as though they had been walking for years. He felt an oddly trance-like quality infuse his movements, the same distorted stretching feeling that had crept up on them all in the Neibolt Street house. Time seemed to be utterly inconsequential. His feet moved automatically, his sneakers scuffling through the grime and mold. </p><p>“Can you guys see?” Mary suddenly spoke up. Fred looked dazedly down at his hands and realized he could make out each of his fingers - a dim hazy grayness had replaced the cloying black. He stopped abruptly, and the others fell into a line at his side, looking around in wonder.</p><p>The tunnel widened out here - not just slightly, but amazingly, the tiled walls running at least fifty feet out on either side to create a very large, circular room. Above their heads, a domed roof was nearly hidden by stone buttresses that crisscrossed the ceiling in even arcs. Thick grey nets of dirty cobweb were strung between these towering ribs like oversized basketball nets. The floor beneath their feet was more stonework, but coated in such a dense layer of filth and ancient dust that it was like standing on carpet. </p><p>“It’s like a cathedral,” said Hal softly, awed. The domed roof above them threw his voice back down in fragmented echoes. </p><p>“Geez, Fred, what’s the Riverdale Waterworks budget like?” FP asked, shoving his glasses up his nose. “No wonder you always get better shit than me for Christmas.” </p><p>“Where’s the light coming from?” Harry asked. There were no windows in the stone room, yet muted streaks of luminous gold floated down to them as though shining through dirty glass. </p><p>“Luh-looks like it’s cuh-coming f-from the w-walls,” Fred said. </p><p>“I don’t like it,” Mary said thinly. </p><p>“Luh-Let’s guh-go.” Fred started purposefully across the stone floor. </p><p>Harry was not sure what he heard first: the rustle of shifting, leathery wings or the sharp, laconic <em> click </em>of beak that he had first heard in the fallen smokestack at the Ironworks. He screamed a warning in the precise second that it became redundant. A great inhuman cry split the air, and an enormous shape came soaring out of the dark far above their heads. Its one lamplike eye shone like a beacon, enormous wings unfurling and pounding the air with thundering, powdery force. </p><p>“It’s the bird!” Hiram screamed, and threw his arms over his face. “Oh, shit, it’s the bird!” </p><p>It dove towards them, opening its fearsome jaw, its pale eye blazing fire. Its layers of teeth rose like jagged white bones protruding from its gums. The satin lining of its grotesque mouth was as large as a child’s coffin, with three orange puffs lined up like soldiers on its tongue. It swooped over Fred’s head and flew for Harry, talons outstretched, who ducked just in time. As he hit the dusty stone on all fours he felt the bird’s claws rake through his hair. </p><p>The bird flapped its wings madly, generating a dusty, dry wind, and wheeled around. It rose up to the cross beams, wings stretched enormously like some massive prehistoric beast, and then dove. Its talons grabbed the back of Hiram’s shirt and tore with resounding strength, slicing great gaping holes in the fabric and raising bloody red lines on his shoulder blades. For a horrible second it lifted the smaller boy into the air, talons hooked into his shirt. Hiram wailed, his feet kicking back and forth uselessly in dead air. </p><p>Harry ran towards him and pulled him back down, his arms wrapped around Hiram in a bear hug. Hiram’s shirt split up the back and they fell hard to the cathedral ground in a jumble of limbs, the bird’s shadow swooping ominously over them. Hiram’s bony elbow stabbed brutally into Harry’s lung, cutting off his air. </p><p>“Get out of here!” Alice was screaming, bravely but ineffectively. “Get out!” She waved her hands at the beast the way Harry had seen his mother try to frighten a bothersome crow. Hal grabbed her and pulled her down as the bird streaked towards them, its beak snapping inches from their heads. </p><p><em> We need the mother of all mooseblowers, </em> Harry thought, and then pleadingly, <em> please let me help my friends. Please let me protect them.  </em></p><p>Hiram began to crawl across the stone floor towards Fred, blood running in crimson rivers down his back, but the bird flew back towards him, screaming, and Hiram threw his hands over his head and sobbed. Harry burst forward, digging his own knife out of his pocket. He had carried it with him since the incident in the gravel pit, a folding Swiss Army pocket knife with a red handle. As the bird dived for Hiram’s exposed back, Harry jabbed it with resounding force into one of the bird’s legs. </p><p>Blood exploded out, drenching his arm. The knife carved a deep red gash in the pebbly skin as the bird flew along the blade. The bird swooped away and then came back, streaking faster than anything, its wings pressed tight to its body. Blood pattered in great drops on the floor like rain. Harry stood like a gunslinger at a standoff and let it come, his focus narrowing until the rest of the great room fell away at the edges of his perception into shadow, and at the very last moment he dove aside, thrusting with the knife. It stabbed into the bird’s belly for one triumphant second, piercing layer after layer of feather - and then the bird’s great claw smashed into his wrist, raising a deep cut and rattling his bones hard enough that his hand went numb. The knife flew out of his grip and into the darkness. Pain moved in over his injured hand in a dark swell, and Harry dropped to his knees before Hiram’s crumpled form. The bird circled around and swooped in on both of them, its great dark shadow rolling over them like cloud passing over a field, and Harry threw his body over Hiram’s bowed back and prayed. </p><p>Mary walked suddenly towards them, stepping trance-like into the centre of the bedlam. She looked impossibly small to Fred - small but very dignified, somehow unsoiled despite the sewer grime that clung to her legs and arms and freckled face. She held out her hands to the bird in an odd gesture, palms extended, fingers pointing down. The bird squawked and blew past her, the wind it made raising the red curls from her head. It wheeled around over their heads, and Mary turned to follow it, keeping it in her sight. She left her arms in their curious position, extended as though reaching for something none of them could see. </p><p>“I believe in Northern Cardinals even though I never saw one,” Mary said in a clear voice. The bird flapped its wings in agitation, crying out as though she had cut it too. Mary’s voice grew stronger and louder. “I believe in pelicans and flamingos. I believe in the New Guinea mudlark and the Madagascar red owl. I believe in the yellow-eared parrot! <em>I believe in the golden bald eagle! </em>BUT I DON’T BELIEVE IN YOU, YOU FUCKER! I KNOW YOU’RE NOT REAL! SO GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE AND DON’T YOU COME BACK!” </p><p>The bird screamed - a long pained scream like the sound that had risen from it when Harry’s projectile had pierced its eye. It flapped its wings madly, blood guttering from its leg and drenching the stone. Then it turned upwards and flew, wings beating furiously, towards the roof of the cathedral. It was swallowed by the darkness between two of the cross beams and disappeared. </p><p>Fred and Hal hurried to where Harry and Hiram were crouching. Hiram was wheezing frantically, and there were tears on his face. A scattering of dusty feathers blanketed the cathedral floor. He fumbled for his inhaler in his pocket and nearly dropped it, his hand shaking badly. Fred took him gently by the shoulders from behind and looked at the cuts on his back. </p><p>“Nuh-Not so b-bad, H-Hiram,” he said. “Buh-Bet they h-hurt, th-though.” </p><p>“It tore my shirt to pieces, Freddie,” Hiram said tearfully. He was hyperventilating in great wheezing gasps. “What am I going to tell my mom?” </p><p>“W-Why duh-don’t you w-worry about th-that luh-later,” said Fred gently, and placed a comforting hand on the back of Hiram’s neck. FP crouched down and hugged Hiram tightly from the side. He nodded encouragingly to the inhaler that was jittering in Hiram’s shaking hand. </p><p>“Go on and take a blast, Hiram.” </p><p>Hiram did. The inhale was a long, loud rasp in the silence. Fred took Harry’s injured wrist in his hands and examined it. The only visible mark was a shallow cut on the meat of his thumb, though by the next day the black and purple bruise would have spread clear up to his elbow. Hiram had calmed, his breathing evening out to a shaky whistle. FP took a commiserative blast on Hiram’s inhaler and handed it back to him. He looked at Mary and grinned. </p><p>“That was great, Mary. Shit, what did I tell ya, Hal? Balls like cantaloupes.” </p><p>Mary was shivering, her hands clutching her elbows. “There’s no bird like that,” she said stubbornly, her face almost peaceful and her jaw set toughly. “That’s all. There isn’t, and there never will be.” </p><p>“HEY, WE’RE COMING!” Marty’s voice suddenly trumpeted from behind them again with disturbing reliability. Caught in the network of pipe and the hollow dome of the cathedral, it seemed to echo crazily from all around them. He was laughing and howling now, the last shred of any remaining sanity clearly gone the way of the enormous bird. “ME AN’ MARCUS! WE’RE COMING TO GET YOU LITTLE PUNKS! COMING TO MOTHERFUCKING KILL YOU!” </p><p>“G-G-G-GET OH-OUT!” Fred shouted back with odd grace. “G-G-GET OUT, M-MARTY! W-WHILE YOU SUH-STILL CAN!” </p><p>There was no answer but an inarticulate scream. Marty’s ragged breathing and heavy footfalls grew louder, his pursuit now inheriting the slavering quality of an enormous rabid dog - or, FP thought, a teenage wolfman in a letterman sweater from whose sleeves puffed great ham-sized hands. He understood the threat of Marty then: he was mortal, real, absolutely insane. They could beat It with faith, with magic, with the talismans and protections of childhood, but courage would not work on Marty, nor belief, nor sincerity. He was too stupid. </p><p>“Come on,” said Harry flatly, sparing the bully none of Fred’s concern. “We have to stay ahead of him.” </p><p>They went across the huge stone floor, holding hands. The gold rays of light seemed to glow brighter as they crossed the room, the tiled walls stretching long and endless ahead of them until horizon lines vanished entirely. It seemed as though the domed roof began to fly out of their field of vision, withdrawing up along with the network of cross-beans to some unintelligible heaven. There was no tunnel now - they were walking through some enormous underground courtyard, where every stone in the floor had expanded to the size of a football field. They walked like children in a fairytale, as though they had climbed the giant’s beanstalk and emerged at the gates of some colossal kingdom. </p><p>Harry understood, as his footfalls sank into the grey and meaningless ground, that he was walking through the closest thing he had ever known to an underworld. (Unless, of course, you thought of the Black Spot, the bodies piled against the doors, the tables leaping with flames, which even in its reduced telling had stood in for Hell for most of his childhood.) He held Hiram’s hand very tightly. </p><p>“It ends up ahead,” Alice said, sounding tearful. “We’re almost there.” </p><p>They were indeed approaching a flat stone wall that extended as far as the eye could see in all directions, including upwards, where it towered a hundred feet over their heads with the slope of the ceiling nowhere in sight. Set into the wall was a single door, no more than three feet high, that completed the illusion of a storybook castle: it was made of heavy oaken planks criss-crossed by strong wrought-iron X’s with a dusky gold knob and keyhole. It was, they all realized with varying degrees of skepticism and fright, a door made specifically for children. And at the feet of the door, heaped up like some dragon’s treasure, was a wide pile of small white bones. </p><p>They were the bones of God only knew how many children, dragged and lured and savaged in the sewers and shadows of town, come to rest here at the place of It forever while on the surface adults went on folding their newspapers and going inside, averting their eyes from the abnormal death toll statistics that they all knew but had forgotten. Fred knelt at the base of the heap and bent his head, feeling the weight of that willful aversion land squarely on his small shoulders, not only his parents’ but the town’s, the obstinate unwillingness to see or to love. Oscar’s six-year-old corpse had been missing its arm, and surely those bones were here, as thin and fragile as a bird’s wing, picked clean by time and death and It. Those bones were here, and there would be others, those who would come after and those who would come years from now. Unless they stopped It. </p><p>“Fred?” FP said. His small hand had landed on Fred’s bony shoulder, and Fred, feeling the strength of that touch flood into him, raised his head to the door. There was a mark upon the door at his eye level, above the stubborn iron bars of the X. It seemed to be a letter in some indecipherable language, a symbol that seemed to Mary to show a bird in flight just as it seemed to Fred to show a paper sailboat buffeted by wind. Alice saw a hand raised in a fist. Later, when Marty Mantle would reach it, he would see a full moon, rich and evil. </p><p>“Do we have to?” Hal asked suddenly in a wavering voice. </p><p>“We have to,” Fred said. He did not stutter. Harry’s hand landed on his other shoulder and squeezed. </p><p>“It’ll be locked,” said Alice shakily. Fred shook his head. Some inner knowledge had come to him - ancient and strong. </p><p>“No, it won’t. Places like this are never locked.” </p><p>He got to his feet, crouching slightly because of his height, and turned the golden knob. The door opened easily, a watery yellow-green light spilling out across his face. It lit the tear tracks on his cheeks into gleaming streaks of pale fire. </p><p>One by one, they passed through the door and into the lair of It.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0014"><h2>14. the ritual of chüd / fred andrews beats the devil</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <em>“Be true, be brave, stand. And the rest is darkness.” - Stephen King, It. </em>
  </p>
  <p>
    <em> “Out of the blue and into the black.” - Neil Young.  </em>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>They were in another stone room, as great as the cathedral had initially seemed when they had passed out of the tunnel, only here there was no ceiling at all but a milky-white fog of what seemed to be clouds. That same yellow-green light filtered down, dark and eerie, though it passed through the clouds in the same soft beams as the sun had passed all summer through their clubhouse roof. In the centre of the room there was another heap, a rising hill like the rugged mountains of refuse in the dump, only this was made entirely of children’s toys. It appeared like the rubble from some great explosion at Santa’s workshop - wagons and dollhouses and carousel horses and sand pails and baseball gloves. Fred’s own baseball bat lay at the base of the heap - the same one he had left in the vacant lot and had gone back for the day they had seen the message written in blood on the wall. </p><p>Fred’s eyes followed the heap of toys up to the milky white fog. He looked up into it - at first his eyes could not make sense of what he was seeing, and then the reality of it struck him with crushing dismay. It was a web - a great fluffy spider’s web from which the decaying bodies of the missing children dangled like overripe flies. He thought briefly that he recognized Eddie Corcoran near the top - only both of his legs and one arm were missing, chewed as though by some colossal set of teeth. He hung by a great tendril of web around his waist, swaying as though alive. </p><p>There was a flash of yellow near the base of the heap. Fred tore his eyes from the grim spectacle of the web and felt awareness land back in his body with a jolt. He was dimly conscious of the others entering the room behind him, but they seemed very far away, as though this room too had stretched and they were at opposite ends of a long corridor. He could hear fat droplets of sewer water dripping down the walls. </p><p>It was a tiny figure in a yellow rain slicker and red boots. Fred saw it dart out of sight behind the hill, and he crossed the cavernous room towards it, taking hurried, scuffling steps across the mossy stone floor. He came to the far side of the heap and felt a devastating, heart-wrenching cry tear itself from the dark reaches of his throat. His brother was standing there, not five feet from him in that horrible cavern below the spider’s web, one arm torn from its socket and his face half hidden in shadow. </p><p>“Oscar,” Fred gasped, feeling tears spring into his eyes. His brother’s face was as white as bone. A grisly knob of meaty red poked through the place where his yellow slicker had been ripped free at the shoulder, decorating the front of the fabric with great slashes of dried blood. His eyes shone reflective in the dark, arcs of silver glinting in their injured depths like the eyes of a cat. Those eyes pulled Fred forward with endless potency, forgetting his friends, forgetting what he’d come for, forgetting It, forgetting Chud, forgetting everything. He walked towards his baby brother and Oscar came forward to meet him, taking halting, limping steps with his torn shoulder drawn into his chest. The green-yellow light flickered over his face. He seemed younger than six, younger than anything. In his only hand he clutched the paper boat that Fred had folded for him almost a year before. </p><p>“I couldn’t find my boat, Fred.” His soft voice trembled with pain, tears swimming in his damp eyes. The glinting silver was gone from them now - the gaze he fixed on his brother was as clear blue and hopeful as it had been in Fred’s memory of that October downpour. “I looked, and looked - I couldn’t find it.” </p><p>Sorrow was clouding Fred’s vision like rain on a window. His brother’s face was fixed longingly on him, luminous and innocent and painfully, crushingly hopeful in the dark. Oscar looked up at Fred with such unflinching, unwavering love that grief drove jagged saw blades of blind agony through his stomach. A dry, choking sob came somewhere out of the depths of Fred’s chest. </p><p>“Oz-” Fred managed, but couldn’t get the word out past his dry throat. Love and pain were two sides of a coin, he had learned that this year and he felt them both now, horrible, endless, both of them rising so viciously in the storm of his insides that he thought he would be torn apart with the intensity of feeling. He drew in a sharp, shuddering breath, and salty tears dripped wetly off the end of his nose and the fringes of his eyelashes, landing on his lips, rolling into his tongue. He shuddered involuntarily, his brother’s face blurring to a smear. </p><p>“Was she fast?” he croaked, barely breathing the words. He felt the skin cracking on his lips and found he was smiling without joy, the salt of his tears stinging the raw cuts. </p><p>“I couldn’t keep up with it.” </p><p>“She,” he said softly, and that flicker of silver was back in Oscar’s eyes now, deep down. Fred forced a watery, trembling smile. “You call boats She, Oz.” </p><p>“You deserve to die for killing me,” Oscar said. His soft face and his tiny voice did not change, and Fred felt the truth of it land with bruising force against the front of his skull and in the closed-off passage of his throat. He nodded wordlessly, the tears building in his throat and against the back of his eyes, building in pressure until he thought he would die from it. </p><p>“I know,” he choked, and felt himself shaking. “I know. I know.” </p><p>“Fight it, Fred!” FP screamed. His friends had filed in behind him, standing in a frightened line near the mountain of toys. “For God’s sake, fight it! </p><p>Fred turned and looked at them all, bewildered. They were still there. How could they stay when they saw what he had done? How he had sent Oscar out into the rain to die? </p><p>“Fight it!” FP screamed. “Please - only you can do this one! Please!” </p><p>“Take me home, Fred,” Oscar wept. He was so near to him now, no more than two feet away, and Fred stared at the face he had never thought he would see again with grief and hunger. He drew closer. He could smell Oscar now - could smell the wet blood of his arm and the scent of the gutter, the smell of rotting old leaves. Oscar’s face crumpled in pitiful despair. His lip trembled, his chin pushed forward in a child’s insolent pout. Tears streamed down his heartbroken face as it collapsed into crying. “I wanna go home,” he wailed, raising the hairs on the back of Fred’s neck with his grief. “I miss you, I wanna be with mom and dad-” </p><p>Fred stepped towards him, helplessly, stretching a shaking hand out towards him. From the distance of another lifetime, FP’s plea broke waveringly into his trance-</p><p>“KILL IT, FRED! THAT’S NOT YOUR BROTHER! KILL IT WHILE IT’S SMALL!” </p><p>“I love you, Fred.” Oscar fixed his wet pleading eyes on his brother. “I love you.” </p><p>“I love you too.” His throat was so dry that only the edges of the words came out, sharp in his mouth like glass. A phrase spun in his mind, hazy, unbidden. </p><p>(he thrusts his fists)</p><p>
  <em> I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Oscar, I love you, I killed you, I don’t deserve to live- </em>
</p><p>(his fists his fists against the)</p><p>“Take me home, Fred, please.” Oscar’s eyes shone with love and sorrow. </p><p>“NO! FRED! IT’S TRICKING YOU!” </p><p>“Oscar, I’m SORRY!” Fred screamed. He could feel the waves of shame and agony radiating from his body and he stepped ever nearer, grief punching him as hard as a train. The pain stabbed at his body like fiery needles, tearing through his muscles and lungs, hot and choking and eternal. He let out a broken, guttural sob from somewhere deep in his body and almost blacked out. </p><p>(posts and still insists)</p><p>“NO! FRED!” </p><p>(he sees the)</p><p>“Please-” and his little brother reached his trembling fingers out for Fred’s hand, his five remaining fingers that were still curled so tightly around the paraffin-sealed boat, the one Fred had fixed for him while rain drenched the windows and their mother played Fur Elise in the parlour. “Everything floats down here, Freddie, we can float <em> together- </em>” </p><p>Fred drew his hand back eons too late. Oscar’s eyes flashed as bright and flat as silver moons, his lips drawing back from his sharp teeth and for a moment Fred saw something squirming madly in the depths of his yawning mouth. The smell of dead leaves intensified- it was on his breath, the putrid, decaying smell of animal corpses on a hot highway in the sun. </p><p>(HE THRUSTS HIS)</p><p>Fred suddenly tried to scream, but the words never came. The thing that had been Oscar rushed at him like an animal, wrapping one arm powerfully around his throat and yanking him up off the stone floor. They flew up together towards the web of corpses, the clown stretching to its full height behind him, at least ten or fifteen feet high, unencumbered by the Neibolt Street ceiling or the costume of Fred’s dead brother. Its filthy, moth-eaten sleeve was pressed chokingly to Fred’s lips, the decaying fabric tasting of ancient rot. Its bloody red eyes flared yellow, rolled to keep him in Its sights. Staring down from where the clown held him in a headlock above the ground, Fred noticed a final absurdity: enormous orange pom-poms had sprung up from the end of each of Its shoes. </p><p>The others drew back from the clown in a pack, screaming, eyes fixed on the horror that held their friend. The clown grinned, exposing a ring of yellow fangs. Its gloved hand gripped Fred’s neck, holding it at such an angle that a single twist would have snapped it with finality. Its nails dug into the soft part of Fred’s cheeks, cutting off his air entirely as It flattened Its broad hand over his mouth. It held him aloft in this grip, his sneakered feet dangling above the damp stone, a too-thin preteen in sewage-splattered Keds who was tall for his age but who seemed infinitely, horribly small in Its arms. He struggled, faintly, but his twitching generated no more reprieve than the horrible swaying of the children who hung suspended in webs high above them. </p><p>“LET HIM GO!” Alice screamed. Her tiny hands were curled into insufficient fists, which she beat hopelessly against her own thighs. “LET HIM GO!” </p><p>“No!” The clown’s voice was ancient, booming with untold power. “I’ll take him.” </p><p>Its red-yellow eyes skated the group of children, the face curving into a bloody smile. “I’ll take all of you, and I’ll feast on your flesh as I feed on your fear.” It gnashed Its lips together. Hiram trembled and moaned. Hal clutched both of Alice’s shoulders in his shaking hands. FP’s face was the color of milk. </p><p>“Or-” It held up a gloved finger, twitching it like a pendulum. “Or I will take only him.” </p><p>It cradled Fred’s head to Its chin, sliding Its hand down to grip firmly around his throat again, squeezing tightly. Bloody red greasepaint from Its lips dripped down into Fred’s hair. Fred’s face was deathly red. There were broken blood vessels in each of his eyes. His laboured attempts at drawing breath were very loud. The clown’s eyes shone with silver-hot enjoyment, Its voice threaded with ancient delight. </p><p>“Leave, and I will take only him, and I will have my long rest. And I will leave you to grow, and thrive, and be happy until old age takes you back to the weeds.” </p><p>“L-L-L-Luh-Leave,” Fred stuttered. It was a herculean effort for him to speak- his voice came out in a croaking whisper. He thought at the time that they were the last words he would ever speak, and forming the words was like grating glass against the skin of his throat. “I-I-Ih-I’m t-t-the one t-that dragged y-you a-all in-into t-this I’m s-s-s-s-s-so-s-so-sorry-” </p><p>The clown began to laugh. It was a horrible, high noise that made Hiram clap his hands over his ears. Mary screamed in horror and despair. FP stepped forward from the others, his sewage-streaked high-tops mute on the hard, dust-covered stone. </p><p>“Are you <em> fucking </em>kidding me, Fred!?” He was unprepared for the strength of the voice that burst out of him, as enormous and loud as the Voices he had done in the Neibolt House- only this was his own voice, all his own, painfully real and recognizable. They were all rendered speechless in the path of it, even the clown, which stopped Its insane laughter and regarded him with bright, childish glee. FP brushed sewage off his pants in disgust and clenched his hands into fists. </p><p>“I told you, Fred. I fucking TOLD YOU! I DON’T WANT TO DIE!” </p><p>“FP!” Alice screamed. She was sobbing. Tears spilled silently down Fred’s face and over the clown’s mouldering sleeve. Its hold tightened on his neck. Hiram was moaning, high and horrified. </p><p>“This is your fault!” FP yelled. His voice filled the impossibly high chamber. He began to pace, slamming his fist into his palm as he listed off betrayals. “You punched me in the fucking face! You made me walk through shitty water! You took me to a fucking crackhead house! And now-!” </p><p>He reached for the baseball bat that leaned against the heap of toys. One hand found the grip, the other sliding just above the knob, fingers aligned, the way Fred had taught him to hold this very bat when they were seven in the vacant lot. His thumb felt the chip from where Hunter Malloy had split the wood with an inside pitch last summer. His own Voice boomed out of him as he lifted it to his shoulder, larger than Paul Bunyan, larger than the cathedral, larger than the world. </p><p>“Now I have to kill this FUCKING CLOWN!” </p><p>The first swing connected directly with both of the clown’s kneecaps. There was a vicious popping sound, and FP swung the bat back and aimed it hard into the shins. The clown roared and threw Fred aside - he hit the cavern wall and went head-over-heels, landing on his face in a puddle of filthy water. FP planted his feet as It charged at him, yellow eyes spitting tongues of flame, and swung both his arms back to deliver the kind of over-the-fences home run the older boys in the vacant lot would never have thought possible of him. </p><p>The bat glanced off the clown’s bulging skull, tearing an inch-wide gap in the space above Its eye. Its head reeled back, the grease-painted skin cracking like an eggshell. Harry screamed and grabbed one of the tent poles from the heap of desecrated toys, beating at the clown’s head and neck and driving back into the path of FP’s bat. It had shrunk now, standing no more than six or seven feet tall, the height of a large adult but no taller. </p><p>“HELP HIM!” Mary yelled, pointing at Fred. Hal ran for him and turned him over, helping him sit up. Fred was breathing in huge, hacking gasps, his eyes bloodshot and his cheeks red. Only a light bruise colored the skin of his forehead. His eyes were fixed on FP, Harry, and Alice, who had the clown surrounded. Alice had grabbed what looked like a metal railway tie and was battering the clown’s shins. </p><p>Giddy, laughing, FP saw Fred get to his feet unharmed and sent him a rapturous salute. There were tears shining in his eyes, but his smile stretched from ear to ear. “CHUD!” FP was bellowing, laughing, rotating the bat in his grip. He drove it into the back of the clown’s neck. “CHUD! CHUD! COME HERE HAL, LET’S GET THIS MOTHERFUCKER!” </p><p>It’s starting, Hal thought instinctively. A high, clear voice was suddenly yammering in his head: <em> the ritual is starting! The ritual is starting! </em> But what was it? What had begun? How did they win? <em> Oh God, I wish I was back in the library, I wish I’d read more books, I wish I KNEW-  </em></p><p>“C’MON!” FP screamed, driving the bat into the clown’s stomach. Hal found himself running into the fray, helplessly impelled by FP’s giddy heroism. Fred followed on his heels, still breathing in wheezing agony, his hands clasped around his bruised throat. “You wanna hear a joke?” FP was shouting, battering the clown with both hands wrapped around the bat. “You’re the joke, bozo!” </p><p>Hiram stood frozen at the edge of the stone floor. He watched the others surround the clown, and for a moment he heard his mother’s voice as directly as if she had spoken beside him. </p><p>
  <em> Run home, Hiram! Run! You can find the way! The way out! The way home!  </em>
</p><p>The clown whirled on Hiram as though it had sensed this uncertainty. Its legs and arms had stretched abnormally, longer than Its body. With one sharp movement It whipped Harry aside, sending him sprawling painfully to the stone floor. The tent pole clattered out of his hand. In front of Hiram’s horrified eyes, the white grease-painted face began to melt. Boils sprouted from Its forehead, clumps of skin tumbling from Its cheeks. Pus dripped down Its chin from a sore at the edge of Its lips. </p><p><em> RUN! </em> Screamed the mother in his mind, but Hiram ignored it. <em> No, </em> he thought, terrified of his own obduracy. <em> Not leaving them. Not today. They’re good friends, and they need me.  </em></p><p>FP tried to drive the bat down into Its arm, but the clown dropped to the floor on all four legs and skittered out of reach. With disgust FP saw that new arms and legs were sprouting from Its sides, the image of the clown distorting into that of some grotesque spider. It ran straight for Hiram, who was trembling at the edge of the pack, scuttling like some kind of demented crab, the sleeves of Its costume dragging on the floor and sweeping clear arcs through the dusty stone. </p><p>“GET IT AWAY FROM ME!” Hiram screamed, throwing his hands over his face. “GET IT AWAY FROM ME IT’S THE LEPER!” </p><p>No sooner than the words left his mouth than the shape of It coalesced for them all - the leper exactly as Hiram had described it that day by the dam, decayed and misshapen, covered in festering ulcers and open sores. It scuttled up to Hiram and lurched towards him, spraying him with thick, gelatinous black vomit that torrented from Its mouth in a sickly geyser. The sick flew in Hiram’s face and mouth, dousing him from head to toe. Every single one of them stopped to stare in horror and a bizarre, fascinated fear. </p><p>“I’M GOING TO FUCKING KILL YOU!” Hiram suddenly screamed. It was a full-blown roar, pumping adrenaline driven to the point of hysterical rage. His voice exploded into the cavernous room, blowing out through his lungs and throat the way no scream had ever done before. Even FP froze and stared at him in awe. It seemed scarcely possible that that roar could come from Hiram Lodge, who had the sickliest lungs and the worst case of asthma Riverdale had ever seen. Hiram’s fury coalesced into one beautiful long scream, contrasting vividly with his small stature as he hopped up and down in pure, full-bodied anger: “JESUS FUCKING CHRIST I’M GOING TO FUCKING MURDER YOU!!!!” </p><p>He ran at the clown and kicked it hard in the face. The clown reeled back, Its eight legs skating out from under it like some twisted slapstick routine, and performed a row of disturbing backwards somersaults before landing crouched on Its feet. Hiram ran at it, his broken arm thumping uselessly against his chest, tasting the sickness in his mouth, vomit slick under his feet, his inhaler held out like a gun. </p><p>“HOW DO YOU LIKE THIS, FUCKNUTS!” Hiram bellowed, and pressed down on the trigger, expelling a blast of camphor-flavoured steam into the clown’s face. The clown screamed, Its mouth twisting open to expose Its rings of teeth, and Hiram blasted it again, mercilessly, spitting black vomit onto the ground. </p><p>
  <em> acid acid i believe it’s acid so it is, i believed it was medicine and it was and now i believe you’re eating BATTERY ACID BATTERY ACID TASTE IT YOU MOTHERFUCKER! EAT THIS! </em>
</p><p>The greasepaint began to run wildly down the clown’s face, Its leaking red eyes dribbling blood - only it wasn’t just the paint, Hiram realized in horror, it was Its face- Its face was leaking, running in great gluey ribbons off of Its skull like strings of snot. It had tried to kill Fred - Hiram identified this suddenly as the source of his anger. He doused it from head to toe with the remaining contents of his inhaler and kicked it incessantly, raining blows on Its head and neck and eight skittering legs. Clumps of the clown’s face came away on his shoe. </p><p>“FIGHT IT!” Hiram raved, lost in the glorious insanity of his own rage. “ITS FUCKING FACE IS MELTING OFF, FIGHT IT! IT’S JUST A FUCKING CLOWN! IT’S JUST A STUPID FUCKING CLOWN <em> AND I’M DOING THE FUCKING MASHED POTATO ALL OVER IT AND I’VE GOT A BROKEN ARM! </em>” </p><p>The others gaped at him in astonished silence. Then Fred grabbed his bat out of FP’s hand and swung it perfectly into the clown’s domed skull. A whole chunk of Its head flew off, blood shooting out of the wound in a dark geyser, seeming momentarily to hang in the air above Its head as though gravity had briefly paused. The clown turned to Alice, one of Its many limbs shooting out and gripping her wrist, pinning down the hand holding the metal post. The melting white skin ran sizzling onto her forearm, making her cry out in pain. She stared at the clown’s melting face and for a moment saw with perfect clarity the face of her own father - his light blue eyes and horrible smile. </p><p>Hal ran at the clown and began to beat and kick at it, raining blows on its back with his bare hands. </p><p>“LET HER GO!” Hal screamed. “LET HER GO!” </p><p>The clown withdrew, leaving a burned mark on Alice’s wrist. She screamed in anger and suddenly raised the metal tie above her head, swinging it down in a savage arc to pierce through the clown’s gaping mouth. She sprang backwards, frightened of her own strength. Pieces of the clown’s skull were tumbling down onto Its shoulders. A geyser of blood spouted around the metal from Its pierced tongue and deep gullet. </p><p>“IT’S JUST A CLOWN!” Hiram was still screaming. “JUST A CLOWN!” </p><p>“JUST A CLOWN!” Mary joined in hysterically. “JUST A CLOWN, KILL IT!” </p><p>“Pretty chuckalicious, Hiram!” FP shouted over the din. The smile was back on his face, his laughter pulsing up from some insane, terrified reservoir deep in his chest until he thought he would never stop. He mimicked him through gales of giddy hysterics: “I’M DOING THE MASHED POTATO ALL OVER IT AND I’VE GOT A BROKEN ARM!” </p><p>Fred picked up the bat, dragging the wood across the uneven stone floor. He rushed to the front of the pack as they surrounded the clown, lifting the bat over his shoulder as naturally as a pro hitter would step up to the plate. The clown scuttled backwards, gulping loudly for air in harsh wheezing breaths that were an eerie mimicry of Fred’s earlier asphyxiation. Fred screamed at it through his bruised throat. </p><p>“Yuh-You kuh-killed my b-brother! You h-h-hurt my f-f-friends!” </p><p>The clown grinned, rocking giddily back and forth as the remains of Its face dripped off Its skull. Fred stepped forwards so that the others were behind him, raising the bat high over his head. It trembled in his thin arms, but his aim was true. </p><p>The clown’s mouth suddenly unhinged. Its jaw rolled back from Its melting face, and Its orange lamp-like eyes shone with a pulsing, malevolent light. Its body moved upwards to standing in three short, jerky movements, as though articulated by some inhuman puppeteer. Its face opened like a hinged door, Its head and neck stretching long above their small heads. Fred froze suddenly in the path of Its gaze, his brown eyes fixed on those yellow ones, on the white lights burning in Its gullet, deep below the lamprey rows of teeth. Harry stepped towards it, his mouth opening to issue a soundless warning. </p><p>“Leave him alone!” Alice was screaming at the clown. “Don’t you touch him!” </p><p>Fred did not move. He stood perfectly, curiously still, his head tilted up to Its eyes. Harry’s arms fell down helplessly to his sides, understanding. The Ritual of Chud, whatever it was, had begun. </p><p> </p><hr/>
<hr/><p>
  <b>WHO ARE YOU AND WHY DO YOU COME TO ME</b>
</p><p>
  <em> I’m Fred Andrews. You know who I am and why I’m here. You killed my brother and I’m here to kill You. You picked the wrong kid, bitch.  </em>
</p><p>His body was still on the damp stone floor, and yet his consciousness was free from it, rising rapidly above the tunnel and out of the dim, hazy stone room where the bodies hung, higher than the bird had flown, higher than the cathedral, out of the town and above the clouds and into the stars. He felt his consciousness spinning away along some vast cosmic corridor, one that stretched out in every direction to the very limits of the human imagination, too vast to see or comprehend. He was flying above the stars now, skating on his hands and knees like a child on an ice rink over some smooth, hard surface under his palms and yet below him there spun only infinite space, the cosmos and everything in it, all painted an infinite deep indigo that was richer than velvet, the dark of a sky before a sunset. Fred spun through the blue towards blackness, skidding on his belly now, a batter diving for home, dragged above this titanic blackness at a speed of ten thousand miles an hour or more, all of it racing away below the body that was not his own - that body stood in the shadow of the clown in the dripping stone room below Riverdale - but the body that existed in his mind. </p><p>
  <b>YOU HAVE NO POWER HERE. I AM THE EATER OF WORLDS. </b>
</p><p>
  <em> Yeah, and you can kiss my fat one, buddy. Pucker up.   </em>
</p><p>He saw Its tongue and bit into it - not with his teeth but with the teeth in his mind, finding Its tongue in his mind, seeing it with his mind and driving the jaw that was in his mind down hard to tear into the flesh, had time to think giddily, crazily, FP LOOK I’VE GOT ITS TONGUE, (though for the time being he had forgotten who FP was) and then It screamed in tremendous pain, screamed in rage and frustration and yes, Fred thought, even terror-</p><p>(he thrusts)</p><p><b>I AM NOT AFRAID OF YOU STUPID BOY I AM THE EATER OF WORLDS </b> <b>AND<br/>I AM HERE TO DESTROY YOU THIS IS ETERNITY MY ETERNITY AND<br/>YOU ARE LOST IN IT FOREVER THINK UPON THAT AND WEEP AND<br/>THEN SPEAK AGAIN OF HOW YOU PLAN TO KILL THE ETERNAL </b></p><p>They were spinning together now, flying across infinite space, locked head to head, an It he could not see apart from the faintest awareness of that raw and grotesque tongue, his teeth tearing through sinew and flesh, his lips and neck doused with the blood of It, the dead stench of Its dark and noxious blood and finally It bit-</p><p>
  <em> back- </em>
</p><p>(his fists)</p><p>
  <b>WHY DO YOU SAY THAT IT CANNOT HELP YOU STUPID BOY I WILL<br/>KILL YOU NOW KILL YOU AND I WILL CAST YOU INTO THE BLACK </b>
</p><p>
  <em>HE THRUSTS HIS FISTS AGAINST THE POSTS!</em>
</p><p>
  <b>STOP IT, STOP IT NOW YOU FOOLISH LITTLE BOY YOU ARE IN ETERNITY WITH ME<br/>AND IT IS COLD AND DARK ARE YOU AFRAID NOW? WAIT UNTIL YOU SEE ME<br/>WAIT FOR THAT! FOR THE DEADLIGHTS!<br/>YOU WILL SEE THEM AND YOU WILL GO MAD WAIT UNTIL YOU SEE ME </b>
</p><p>
  <em>HE THRUSTS HIS FISTS AGAINST THE POSTS! HE THRUSTS HIS FISTS AGAINST THE POSTS! IF I COULD SAY IT OUT LOUD IF I COULD JUST SAY IT WITHOUT STUTTERING I COULD STOP YOU! </em>
</p><p>
  <b>YOU WILL NEVER STOP ME YOU CANNOT SAY IT<br/>I WILL CAST YOU INTO THE BLACK AND YOU WILL GO MAD<br/>WAIT FOR THE DEADLIGHTS WAIT AND SEE THEM-</b>
</p><p>The blackness had engulfed them now, blacker than any tunnel they had encountered in the sewer drain, and yet Fred saw clearly some gigantic shape up ahead of them, had the impression of it barreling towards them though he knew it was standing still and they were the ones moving, shooting towards the great shape like a train on a track, skidding madly and gaining velocity like something dropped from a great height. He felt fear but also a sense of overpowering awe - for this thing he was approaching was a power greater than It, a power older and more titanic than anything he had ever seen or known, a power that reduced Its potent terror to no more than a whisper of monster-breath under the bed, a night terror rocked away by your mother’s kisses-</p><p>(please whatever you are please be kind)</p><p>He slid towards it and saw it was a great Turtle, vast and beautiful, its shell blazing with many colours and each fragment of shell containing a multitude of bright and swirling galaxies. It was colossal, ancient, great beyond words, but its eyes were gentle. There was wisdom in those eyes and an age beyond anything - Fred thought it must be older than the blackness they spun through, older than the universe, older even than It, which had claimed to be eternal. He went shooting past it towards the darker black, and yet no matter how fast he moved the Turtle’s great shell seemed to go on sitting still beside him forever, it seemed to be much, much later by the time he slid beyond the ruby and sapphire shell and the bluish tail. </p><p><em> HELP ME! </em> He cried out to it, cried like a child who is lost, <em> Please, you are good, I can sense it, I know you are good and kind, please help me, please-  </em></p><p>The Turtle spoke in a voice more ancient than time, a voice that filled his head and silenced the ravings of It completely. </p><p>
  <em>You already know, said the Turtle to Fred Andrews. There is only Chüd. And your friends.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Please, please-</em>
</p><p>Then the Turtle was behind him and he was flying away, skating off beyond star and cloud, towards the darkness where It was waiting, the place where It really lived, not the house or the sewer but some other place beyond the universe where he would see It for what it was, Its hungry, sickening light, Its horrible truth, see it and die or else live forever inside of it, driven insane by Its formless rage, into the deadlights, into It, forever, the place where his minuscule life would end. </p><p>It swelled with victory, Its hot, gleaming hatred blotting out Its pain as it laughed cruelly at his fate, and Fred saw himself sliding towards the dark, not just void or blackness but some final Dark, perhaps the Dark that had frightened Oscar all along, that cold and hungry place beyond salvation or comprehension, through the last final wall of the universe, through that fairytale door and into the incomprehensible chaos beyond what the Turtle had made, somewhere where his teeth would be ripped out of Its tongue and the ritual would end-</p><p>Drawing in a great breath, he screamed, screamed the phrase that had been inutterable for years:  </p><p>
  <em> “HE THRUSTS HIS FISTS AGAINST THE POSTS AND STILL INSISTS HE SEES THE GHOSTS!”  </em>
</p><p>He felt It scream in his mind. It writhed against him, twisting the way he himself had twisted below the clown’s hand, trying to push him away, but his teeth were in its tongue and he held on, yelling in his own voice without raising his clenched jaw from the meat of Its tongue, not stuttering now, not hesitating: </p><p>“HE THRUSTS HIS FISTS AGAINST THE POSTS AND STILL INSISTS HE SEES THE GHOSTS! HE THRUSTS HIS FISTS AGAINST THE POSTS AND STILL INSISTS HE SEES THE GHOSTS! HE THRUSTS HIS FISTS AGAINST THE POSTS AND STILL INSISTS HE SEES THE GHOSTS! HE THRUSTS HIS FISTS AGAINST THE POSTS AND STILL INSISTS HE SEES THE GHOSTS! HE THRUSTS HIS FISTS AGAINST THE POSTS AND STILL INSISTS HE SEES THE GHOSTS! HE THRUSTS HIS FISTS AGAINST THE POSTS AND STILL INSISTS HE SEES THE GHOSTS! HE THRUSTS HIS FISTS AGAINST THE POSTS AND STILL INSISTS HE SEES THE GHOSTS! HE THRUSTS HIS FISTS AGAINST THE POSTS AND STILL INSISTS HE SEES THE GHOSTS! HE THRUSTS HIS FISTS AGAINST THE POSTS AND STILL INSISTS HE SEES THE GHOSTS! HE THRUSTS HIS FISTS AGAINST THE POSTS AND STILL INSISTS HE SEES THE GHOSTS! HE THRUSTS HIS FISTS AGAINST THE POSTS AND STILL INSISTS HE SEES THE GHOSTS! HE THRUSTS HIS FISTS AGAINST THE POSTS AND STILL INSISTS HE SEES THE GHOSTS! HE THRUSTS HIS FISTS AGAINST THE POSTS AND STILL INSISTS HE SEES THE GHOSTS! HE THRUSTS HIS FISTS AGAINST THE POSTS AND STILL INSISTS HE SEES THE GHOSTS! HE THRUSTS HIS FISTS AGAINST THE POSTS AND STILL INSISTS HE SEES THE GHOSTS! HE THRUSTS HIS FISTS AGAINST THE POSTS AND STILL INSISTS HE SEES THE GHOSTS! HE THRUSTS HIS FISTS AGAINST THE POSTS AND STILL INSISTS HE SEES THE GHOSTS! HE THRUSTS HIS FISTS AGAINST THE POSTS AND STILL INSISTS HE SEES THE GHOSTS! HE THRUSTS HIS FISTS AGAINST THE POSTS AND STILL INSISTS HE SEES THE GHOSTS! HE THRUSTS HIS FISTS AGAINST THE POSTS AND STILL INSISTS HE SEES THE GHOSTS! HE THRUSTS HIS FISTS AGAINST THE POSTS AND STILL INSISTS HE SEES THE GHOSTS! THERE I SAID IT!”</p><p>
  <b>NO! NO! </b>
</p><p>“HE THRUSTS HIS FISTS AGAINST THE POSTS AND STILL INSISTS HE SEES THE GHOSTS I SAID! NOW IVE SAID IT LET ME FUCKING GO-"</p><p>It screamed again, more intensely now, the pain all new to It, and It tried to push him further away, further towards the black- and an image came again into Fred’s head, an image of his teeth in Its tongue, biting down and through it, tearing through gristle and muscle and meat, blood bubbling under his teeth, drowning in Its blood and still tearing, still holding on, still struggling with blind strength and rage to keep it from shaking him free. </p><p>“HE THRUSTS HIS FISTS AGAINST THE POSTS!” Fred screamed, laughing now, because It had laughed first, had lost, had admitted defeat as the library book had explained. “HE THRUSTS HIS FISTS AGAINST THE FUCKING POSTS AND STILL INSISTS HE SEES THE GHOSTS NOW BRING ME BACK! BACK TO MY BODY! BACK TO MY FRIENDS! I DEMAND IT!” </p><p><b>YOU WILL NEVER FIND YOUR WAY BACK YOU WILL NEVER<br/></b> <b>YOU WILL DIE IN THE DARK, IN THE DEADLIGHTS-</b></p><p>
  <em> (Chud, this is Chud then, you bite and It bites back, and you tell jokes and how’s this for a joke buddy my mother hasn’t held me since my brother died, and I thought if I could only say those words she would love me again, I believed in that, that’s funny isn’t it, the things we believe in, hiram believed his inhaler was battery acid and mary believed in her birds and I’m only eleven and I believe in them all, in monsters under the bed and monsters in the dark and that santa claus comes around handing out presents if you’re good enough, i believe that my mother and father will love me again, i believe that my friends now are going to be my friends forever, i believe that my silver bike can ride to beat the devil, and i believe in all these things but I don’t believe in you, (HE THRUSTS) i’ll never believe in you, (HIS FISTS) i’m not afraid) </em>
</p><p>Fred laughed and light flared around him, laughed and shouted it - “HE THRUSTS HIS FISTS AGAINST THE POSTS AND STILL INSISTS HE SEES THE GHOSTS!” his head rushing with a great heady flood of power, the light breaking into the dark and caressing his bruised cheeks and tortured throat. Then he was being pulled backwards as though by some unseen magnetic force - back out of the black and into the blue, shooting back past the place where the Turtle stood, head drawn into its gleaming shell. </p><p><em> Be careful - </em> he heard the Turtle whisper in its kind voice, the whisper flashing out like ribbons in the narrowing scope of eternity that drew him back towards where he had come, <em> What’s done when you're eleven is not often done again -  </em></p><p>And then he was past it and hurtling back through the senseless, starry void, back into the child’s body that stood unyieldingly in the damp, dingy cavern, tall for his age but so small - for a moment he saw his own body as though from outside of it, his head hanging back, his torn baseball tee and sewage-streaked blue jeans and mud-splattered Keds, Hal and FP on either side of him. And the clown screaming in Its death-throes, jittering and spasming as Its white head came apart, whirling below the web where dead children hung like unfortunate flies. </p><p>Fred landed back in his body with the force of a line drive striking a baseball glove, a blunt and painful impact that knocked him clear across the room and blew one of his shoes from his foot. He flew backwards and skidded on the stone, tearing a great bloody streak across his back. The bat he had been holding shot out of his hand and clattered ecstatically across the stone floor. </p><p>“FRED!” FP screamed. They ran to him, FP getting there first, and he helped him into a sitting position and held him against his body. His arms were around him, his cheek pressed to Fred’s cheek, and that was good - that touch was good, was strong, was wonderful. </p><p>“It’s okay,” FP was saying, his arms wrapped tight around him, rubbing his arm. There were tears raining down his cheeks onto Fred’s skin. “You’re okay now, you’re okay now.” </p><p>Hal dropped to Fred’s shoulder at his other side. Fred looked at the others, who stood in a rough semi-circle facing the clown, and staggered to his feet. FP rose up with him. Exhaustion spun the world into a swirl of colours - his legs trembled, and he made an effort to focus his eyes. He coughed and tasted hot blood in his mouth. </p><p>It dragged Itself away from them across the stone floor. Fred might have called it a spider entirely now, for there was an arachnid feeling of many eyes and many legs, but he knew the true form was neither that of a clown or a spider. Whatever it was, Fred had hurt it badly enough to kill it. It was leaking great pools of blood, Its shiny eyes retreating into the remains of Its misshapen face, which resembled beyond anything a baby doll buried in bloated, oatmeal-like flesh. It scuttled backwards, smearing long trails of Its dark blood across the stone, Its head finally collapsing in on itself and Its legs curling up. Fred saw chunks of Its skull drifting up into the air. Gravity in the chamber seemed abruptly to have ceased: he felt the hairs standing up from his skull and at the back of his neck. </p><p>“Look out!” Alice suddenly shouted. She pointed up above their heads. </p><p>The web was coming apart. Behemoth strands of dense white cobweb floated down from above them, slow and languid, drifting like clouds. When these strands hit the floor they melted and became gluey liquid, running in the cracks between the stones in sizzling tendrils like the black ooze in the Neibolt house. A streak of web landed on Harry’s shoulder, and he yelled and swatted it off. Fred saw blood where it had burned through his T-shirt like acid. </p><p>Darkness slid in, circling the walls. The yellow-green light had gone out. Fred struggled to see through the remains of the web, which drifted down like heavy snow. A cry from Hiram made them all whirl around. </p><p>“Look!” Hiram pointed at the swaying bodies, no longer cradled in clouds of webbing. His voice was full of awe, his face still smeared with dark grime. “The kids. They’re floating.” </p><p>They were floating, bodies encircled by air. Shadows moved as a rotating zoetrope above their heads, the dark shapes drifting as gently as autumn leaves around the heaped pulpit of the hill of toys. The missing descended slowly. </p><p>“Where is it?” Fred asked. He was the only one not looking up at the floating bodies, his head turning frantically from side to side as he tried to see through the falling cobweb. FP’s arms were still locked around his middle. “The clown?” </p><p>Fred could hear the sound of Its death throes getting fainter. They were still connected by some tenuous cerebral thread, and he knew It had gone back into the place where they had been together, that colossal universal dance floor where he had slid towards infinity like a batter stealing home. </p><p>But gone back to die? Or to heal? To wait? </p><p>They had to go after it - they had to be sure. He tried to communicate this to Harry, but FP pulled him, stumbling, out of the way of a great clot of webbing and shook his head wordlessly at Fred’s attempts to protest. </p><p>“It’s dead,” FP said. He was crying. “It’s over, Freddie. Don’t - don’t you go back there.” </p><p>The web descended around them, melting into the floor until nothing remained of the clotted white clouds. Above them they could now see the roof of the chamber, a tall stone cylinder capped with a dome some twenty-five vertical feet above them. In the absence of the web and the clown’s malice, the room seemed very plain. But Fred had eyes for none of this. His gaze had been caught by a scrap of yellow that lay carelessly at the base of the heap of toys. </p><p>Fred walked towards it, stepping over the sizzling streams of webbing that ran between the cracks in the stone. He crouched to one knee and pulled the small yellow rain slicker towards him. There was a white label sewn into the slicker’s collar, and in black letters in another world his mother’s hand had once carefully inked: </p><p>OSCAR ANDREWS</p><p>Fred held the rain slicker to his mouth, and FP crouched down beside him. His hand touched Fred’s shoulder - not rubbing, not squeezing, just resting there gently. His narrow chest was pressed to the point of Fred’s elbow, and as Fred began to sob, FP’s arms gently wrapped around him from behind, his chin tucked into the soft place where Fred’s neck met his shoulder.  </p><p>Hiram sank to his knees on Fred’s other side. His face was still smeared with the black muck, his tattered shirt clinging to his tiny chest. He watched them worriedly for a moment before grabbing Fred and hugging him tightly. </p><p>Hoarse gasping sobs shook Fred’s body. Harry and Alice were behind him now, Mary and Hal awkwardly laying their hands on his shoulders from behind. Then Alice bent and threw her arms around him and the others piled on, Hal holding FP and Alice, Harry holding Hiram’s hand and Fred’s shoulder, Mary closing the circle from behind, her arms around all of them while Fred’s wet sobs echoed in the dark. </p><p>In the silence, his weeping was very loud. </p><hr/><p>On the surface, it had stopped raining. Rays of sunlight pierced the lush canopy of trees that the residents of Riverdale called the Barrens, falling through gaps in the leaves like gold arrows to light the green riverbank below. At the edge of the riverbed, the iron cap of a small, noiseless cement cylinder rose a few inches above the lip. Aided by Hal Cooper’s shoulder, the iron lid slid gradually off the edge of the pumping-station and fell to the rocky riverbed below. It crashed into the tangled river-grasses that were bleached gold by the sun, carving a gulley into the bank of pebbles that lay alongside the stream. </p><p>One by one, the seven children emerged from the darkness. Alice’s first view of the familiar greenery and the sun gleaming off the water made her heart swell in her chest with hope. She took the hand Hal offered to help her over the rim of the pumping-station, her eyes fixed on the wonderful green of the Barrens and the pale blue sky above the trees. </p><p><em> Home, </em> she thought, knowing it would be different now, without her father, and not caring. She felt the kiss of warm air on her cheeks and wanted suddenly to cry. They could go back to being kids again, and that would be good. That would be wonderful. </p><p>They were on the banks of Sweetwater River, which pulsed lazily through the foliage, swollen with the day’s rainfall. Closer to town, the water had risen below the Kissing Bridge almost to the top of the pilings, darkening the wood just below where FP Jones had once carved two sets of initials in an uncertain lover’s hand. They stood on the weedy riverbank, blinking like newborn kittens who had only learned to open their eyes, orienting themselves by the far-off vibrations of a train trestle and the glints of sunlight that felt hot and sharp after so much darkness. </p><p>By unspoken command they followed one another several feet downstream, trailing the water in a tired, wavering line, and finally found a place on the bank to sit among reeds and sweetgrasses, parallel to the busy river where dragonflies skimmed to and fro across the surface. A clear glass Coke bottle lay discarded near the water’s edge, gleaming like a diamond in the swollen afternoon light. Hiram looked at the plastic inhaler in his hand and then threw it with finality away into the weeds. </p><p>“The clown,” Fred said at last. “Did we kill it?” </p><p>They looked at each other. For a moment Fred saw hellish doubt on Alice’s face - and Mary’s. Then Hiram nodded emphatically, a flush of joy and relief spreading below the muck smeared on his cheeks, and the intangible belief zipped from one group member to the next, filling their faces with bright and lovely happiness. </p><p>“We killed it, Freddie,” Hiram said eagerly. “I heard it. You don’t sound like that unless you’re dying.” </p><p>“Nothing could have lived through that,” Hal said and regarded Fred with wary respect. “Whatever you did, that ritual thing, you finished it.” </p><p>FP nodded up and down decisively. “It’s dead. And you know what else, Freddie? You’re not stuttering.” </p><p>Fred started at this news, the clown momentarily wiped from his mind. For a moment he was speechless, opening and closing his mouth. Then a smile crossed his face, warm and slow, pure as June sunlight, and FP thought briefly that being fixed in the path of that smile was the most wonderful thing in the world. </p><p>“You were amazing, Hiram,” Alice said sincerely. Her bare arms and shoulders were covered with scratches and smeared with sewage, but she looked lovely despite this, and very strong. “We would have been lost for sure without you.” </p><p>“I’M DOING THE MASHED POTATO ALL OVER IT AND I’VE GOT A BROKEN ARM!” FP suddenly crowed, and laughed heartily. Hiram smiled, and FP touched his cheek with fondness. “You’re insane, buddy.” </p><p>“Me and your mother,” said Hiram, and dodged FP’s retaliatory headcuff. </p><p>Harry suddenly punched FP’s arm, earning them all a moment of silence in which FP was too flattered by the gesture to speak. “You weren’t so bad yourself.” </p><p>“What was it like?” Mary asked Fred. He sensed a note of sobriety in her tone that he had not heard from the others, her eyes somber with a deep and private worry. Fred tried to think back to the void, but it was as though there was something blocking that memory, carving out everything beyond the moment he had locked eyes with the clown. </p><p>“I don’t remember,” Fred admitted. “But I think-” (In fact he was sure, he had remembered this fact with abrupt certainty, though the rest of it was darkness) “-I think I told It to suck my fat one.” </p><p>They all collapsed with laughter, even Mary, who laughed gleefully, all of them holding each other in twos and threes and pounding one another on the back. Then Fred’s face fell, his features rearranging into worry. He looked at Harry and then at Hal. </p><p>“What if it’s just hurt? What if it can get better?” </p><p>Harry shook his head. “It’s gone away, Fred. For a long time, at least.” </p><p>Suddenly Mary got up, slowly and thoughtfully. She walked to the river’s edge and picked up the glass bottle, which lay reflecting the sky and clouds in the heavy summer’s heat. In a sharp, precise movement, neat like everything about her, she brought it down on a nearby stone, shielding her face from the shards of glass with her shoulder. Using a stick, she poked through the pieces of broken glass and came up with a big curved one with a narrow tip. She turned to Fred, and when their eyes met the understanding passed soundlessly between them. </p><p>A whippoorwill sang off across the river, and tiny white butterflies chased each other through the weeds. Fred rose and stepped forwards towards her, his palms opened, like a gift. Mary held up the jagged chunk of bottle and then lay it gently in Fred’s waiting palm. It was warm from the sun. </p><p>“Swear to me,” Fred said. He stood on the sunny bank of that river looking at the circle of them - those weary, well-loved faces, his childhood friends. He held the shard of glass up in his hand. “Swear to me if it isn’t dead - we’ll come back.” </p><p>They all nodded, their faces stark with honesty. Fred turned his hand palm-up and drew the shard of glass along the skin, drawing ripe, red blood. Then one by one they held out their hands, and he cut them with the chunk of bottle, raising blood. He looked at Harry beside him, who was smiling gently, and they joined hands. The others followed and they stood in a circle, the whippoorwill calling in the distance, blood running from their fingers, lit by an awareness that they were here, all of them together, for the last time, the seven of them in this way. They would play together again in twos and threes, in fours and fives, but never all seven of them at once. Not like this. </p><p>“Swear,” Hal said somberly. </p><p>“Swear,” FP repeated. He was holding Fred’s other hand. </p><p>“I swear, Fred,” Alice said.</p><p>“I swear it,” Hiram repeated. </p><p>“Swear,” said Harry Clayton. </p><p>“I swear too,” Mary said, but her voice broke and she looked down as she said it. </p><p>They stood in a circle on the banks of the river, feeling the power in that gesture, in their closeness, in their joined palms and the summer heat that beat down on their heads. At last, they dropped their hands. There was nothing more to be said, but they stood looking at each other, relishing in that love, that power, feeling the warm sun on their skin and the gentle song of the water over the stones. The murmur of the river blended with the sound of the crickets in the high grasses, and the bullfrogs that croaked a melody off in the reeds. The air was soft and fragrant with heat and greenery, the smell of so many childhood afternoons. </p><p>“Well, I’ve got to go,” Mary said at last. She looked at each of them in turn, but directed her words to Fred. “I’ll see you around?” </p><p>Harry hugged her goodbye, and Mary lay her head briefly against his shoulder. FP fumbled abruptly in his pockets and came out with Mary’s lighter, which he held helpfully out to her, though it was smeared with sewage and his blood. </p><p>“Here,” said FP, and Mary smiled fondly.</p><p>“You keep it.” </p><p>“Bye, Mary,” said Alice, and hugged her tightly. Fred stepped forward when Alice let her go and did a peculiar thing - he kissed her gently on the cheek. Mary touched the place on her cheek lightly, leaving a smear of blood from her fingertips, and smiled. </p><p>“Bye,” she said, and began to walk up the bank towards the town. Hiram stood up next, his hands tightening and loosening anxiously over the open cut on his palm. </p><p>“Well, bye, Fred.” Hiram said. He hugged Fred and then turned to FP, his face suddenly glowing scarlet. “You were pretty cool down there.” </p><p>“No fake, Jake,” said FP, and pulled him in very tightly. He pressed his nose into Hiram’s shoulder, holding him awkwardly because of his broken arm. “Come by the arcade tomorrow, okay?” </p><p>“Sure.” Hiram disentangled himself clumsily from FP’s embrace and waved goodbye to them all, looking oddly carefree in his sewage-streaked clothes and filthy hair. He headed up the hill towards the road in quick, jaunty strides, seeming healthy and young in the lengthening sunshine, the darkness already behind him. </p><p>“Hold on, I’ll go with you,” said Harry. He hugged Hal, who looked surprised, but returned the gesture. Then Harry turned to Fred, his eyes shining, and hugged him very tightly. </p><p>“I love you guys, you know,” he said. Then he broke into a smile and raced up the hill towards town with an athlete's stride. </p><p>Fred turned back and found Alice had leaned up and kissed Hal lightly on the mouth. FP mimed gagging. </p><p>“Boy, I’m out of here,” he said, shoving his filthy glasses up his nose. “I’ll be in the arcade if you want me. I have to beat my high score on Street Fighter. Keep it in your pants, you two, will you?” </p><p>Hal beamed broadly, all trace of self-consciousness forgotten, and threw an arm around FP’s shoulders. The three of them began to walk up the hill towards town, not talking for once, only meandering in the affectionate silence of childhood friends. When they reached the road, they separated simply in three different directions. </p><p>Fred followed them out - but for a moment he stood looking out over the river, the dense green foliage they had worn paths through all summer, seeing it as though for the last time in his childhood and understanding that it was a good thing, a lovely thing to outgrow. </p><p>They would not play in the Barrens again - but for the time being, they had the end of summer to look forward to, Riverdale’s sweltering August days and endless pick-up baseball games, the warm, cicada-filled nights that promised bright and scorching mornings at their close. For those last few weeks before school began kids would return to the alleys and parks of town, skipping through the streets from the arcade to the Aladdin and back again, slowly but surely, and the sunlight would be bright and peaceful. If it rained sometimes there would be no malice in it, no darkness or death, only the water rushing hollowly through the storm drains as it burbled through the stones below his feet on the sun-bleached banks, the black trapped far below them and the blue sky overhead.</p><hr/><p></p><blockquote>
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    <em>“And if you spare a last thought, maybe it’s ghosts you wonder about . . . the ghosts of children standing in the water at sunset, standing in a circle, standing with their hands joined together, their faces young, sure, but tough . . . tough enough, anyway, to give birth to the people they will become.” - Stephen King, It.</em>
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  <span class="u"> <strong>END OF PART ONE</strong> </span>
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